that. we must examine our own attitudes as individuals and a nation. our attitude is as essential as bears. as a graduate of the school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring these should begin by looking inward >> tom brokaw nick clooney we slept on the nixon presidency and his peace speech on c-span 3. groups testified on capitol hill on tuesday about problems they experienced while applying to the irs for tax exempt status. organizations testifying included the national position ssan fernandothe valley patriots.

this is three and a half hours.

>> good morning. the hearing will come to order. we will give the media a chance to leave. tod morning, welcome everybody for being with us today. despite the two years of denials, last month the irs

finally admitted the truth. three years ago, the agency began systematically targeting individuals based on the political beliefs. what the agency has yet to commit and what we still need to find out is just how widespread this activity was, who ordered it, and why it began in the first place. let's consider what we do know. in march of 2010, the ira's the to get a target list that ensnared conservative groups based solely on their political beliefs. in may of 2011, the irs started sending letters to nonprofits that they could be liable for gift taxes. in june of 2011, the ways and means committee initiated an investigation and highlighted concerns the individual taxpayers might be targeted for their beliefs. in june of 2011, the senior leadership in washington, d.c. office became aware that iras workers had been using a list to

target groups with names like liberty, tea party, patriots, 9/12, or make america a better place to live. in march of 2012 the huffington post published a 2012 donor list of a conservative texan brent -- tax-exempt organization. the treasury parma was informed of an audit examining the targeting of groups -- the treasury department was informed of an audit examining the targeting of groups. was practice occurred and reported, but only after a report that resulted in senior irs officials planting a question about retargeting activity before the report's release. just this weekend, "the wall reported that"

the report that launched this commission was the result of the owners being targeted for their political beliefs. those are the facts we know. americans were affected by the culture of political .ntimidation and discrimination this investigation is about how and why the irs was in power and on how to use a broken tax code individuals based on their beliefs, and only on their beliefs. who are these americans. their life stories are different, but they are americans who do what we asked people to do every day. at their voice to be dialogue that defines our country. for pursuing that passion, for simply exercising their first amendment rights, their freedoms of association in the expression of religion, the ira's single them out. today's witnesses will help this committee and the american people better understand how far off track the irs has gone.

the testimony will show that the irs has treated certain americans differently based on their beliefs and it was not limited to discriminatory report released may 14 of this year. victims include tea party and non-tea party groups, social welfare organizations, and charitable organizations, including religious organizations. all witnesses received questionnaires and had their answer is linked to the media, which could have an impact of killing free speech. information requests for some included questions that were not only irrelevant, but also intimidating, not to mention a violation of privacy. those questions include asking for the following, copies of all activity on facebook or twitter, resume is of past or present

employees, whether past or present employees plan to run for office in the future, a list of past or present board members or members of their family who volunteered at a tax-exempt organization, information on their interaction with the media, details regarding the groups' interactions with taxpayers and donors' lists. americans have been treated differently and discriminated against by their in the because of their -- discriminated against because of their individual beliefs. i want to thank the witnesses were being with us today, for sharing your stories and experiences. we might not know why this happened, but learn first hand from you about why the irs uses the tax code to intimidate and harass you will help us take the steps to make sure this never happens again. i will now recognize ranking member levin for an opening

statement. >> thank you very much. and everyst hearing day since, each of us, on a bipartisan basis, has condemned the actions within the irs exempt organization division. and condemn the actions by the ira's leadership, who failed to accurately and adequately inform congress after they had all of the facts of what had occurred between 2010 and 2012. the single said that out by name was wrong. the president said it was outrageous. of over 13 months in processing applications were wrong. the fact that the applications of some organizations have been pending for over three years is

inexcusable. the inability to give clear guidance on how to measure political activity was wrong. questions and inquiries were totally inappropriate. the handling of these applications was gross mismanagement by the irs exempt organization division. that is why the day after the report was issued, i called for acting commissioner steve miller and the exempt organization division director to be replaced. hearing, progress has been made to address the malfeasance that occurred within the irs exempt organization division and to assure that all of the facts come to the surface and that all identified problems are corrected so that the confidence of the american people may be stored.

steve miller resigned as the irs commissioner. the president appointed another person as the acting irs commissioner. secretary lew instructed him to immediately conduct a 30 day review and to implement the recommendations of the i.g. report. the director of the exempt organization division was placed on administrative leave by the commissioner -- the acting commissioner. the acting commissioner appointed david fisher as the chief risk officer. he previously served as the chief administrative officer and chief financial officer at g ao. yesterday, he appointed a new deputy commissioner and a chief of staff, both with significant managerial and administrative experience. to the individuals testify

before us, to each and all of you, to the organizations they represent, and all of the others who were caught up in this malfeasance, you are owed an apology. we say to you, that each of us is committed to doing our part to ensure this does not happen again. .g.'s report includes a number of key facts we should keep in mind today. the applications of 298 organizations was set aside for review. one-third of the applications that were set aside, 96, contained the name tea party, 9/12, or patriots. the remaining 202 applications did not. 176irs released a list of advocacy organizations that have been approved for tax-exempt

status through may 9. organization, tax analyst, did an analysis of the list released by the ira's. its inclusion as to the approved applicants' states, these organizations are the following, 46 with tea party, patriots, or 9/12 in their name. 76 other conservative organizations. 48 non-conservative organizations. this is not a democratic or republican issue. it should not be. this issue is a direct reflection on highly inappropriate actions within the irs exempt organization division and totally incompetent management with sand and over the division. a -- tigta report found

that irs employees were screening applications that had no indication of significant political activity while closing cases that did have such indications. -- for taxfor cat exempt status, the tax code provides that an organization must operate exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. the regulations state that an organization will qualify for tax-exempt status if operated primarily for social welfare purposes. overall, the data indicates an emerging use of the social welfare designation under 501 c4 to engage in political activity.

spent $92 million in the 2010 elections. they spent $254 million in the 2012 election, the second- largest category of organizations making political expenditures, equal to that of political parties. one recommendation -- and i close with this, in the tigta report was that there was the guidance on how to measure the primary activity of social welfare organizations included for consideration in their priority guidance plan. we urge them to move with all deliberate speed to implement this recommendation. behalfing, i want to, on of all of us on the democratic side, and i think on behalf of all of us, thank the witnesse for being here today.

, and for discussing your experiences. please be a short, as you testified -- please be assured that we take seriously our responsibility to ensure that congress is to the bottom of what happens, that those responsible are held accountable, and that safeguards are in place to ensure that this does not happen again. thank you. >> thank you, mr. levin. again, thank you all for being here today and thank you for the courage in stepping into the spotlight in giving voice to the hundreds of individuals affected by this activity. the committee has received each of your written statements and they will be made part of the formal hearing record. each of you will be recognized for five minutes for your oral remarks. we have been lighting system. the green light will go until

you have 30 seconds remaining and then there will be a yellow light and then a red light. after each of you give your oral statements, we will move to a question. the members will have five minutes to question you and they will be subject to the same lighting system. at the time also is cutting that off, it is to make sure every minute -- every member has there five minutes. our first member is the founder of linchpins for liberty, dedicated to educating high- school and college students about the nation's on the documents. he comes to us from franklin tennessee. you are not recognized for five minutes. if you want to touch the microphone but in please, thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you to the honorable members of this committee. i am president and founder and intends of leadership -- lynchpins of liberty. our model is to challenge the imagination of the rising

generation. we do this by a mentor and high- school students in the conservative whip of philosophy. we aim to mentor high-school students by teaching them about the great books and the foundations of american -- america's moral order. we are a local institution intended to act as a check on the power of the state to moderate the despotism of majorities and to give people a taste of freedom and the skills to be free. we are committed to a literary education, and moral convictions that will allow citizens to maintain political order. that god is the measure of all things and that the soul is the essence of humanity. students learn how the creeks were able to maintain freedom because of their pursuit of private gain for public expense and the squandering of resources on extravagance. from cicero, we learn the

necessity of the rule of law and we learn that true law is right reason and agreement with nature. virtue must not yield to power. lynchpins of liberty is expired -- inspired by augustine who said only in obedience to gpd do we find perfect -- god do we find perfect liberty. religion and morality are indispensable support for prosperity. we learned that positive law must confirm -- conform to natural law and the republican only be sustained by the virtue of its citizens. we recognize that the state is god-ordained, necessary to protect against foreign enemies and that there can be no freedom without the rule of law. the government cannot be a lot of money itself and when the state usurped its legitimate authority by interfering in the realm of speech, religion,

family association and ideas, we have a duty as human beings to oppose and to protest the state's trespassing its limits. in order to raise money, i filed an application with the irs in january of 2011 seeking to 3 status.1 c as of today, i have been waiting 29 months without a status. in the interim, i lost the $30,000 a lot grant from a reputable non-profit who is executive director advised me that he had never seen such treatment of an applicant in his 25 years of making grants. i also lost and continue to lose multiple thousands of my own money. i had to refuse further money for fear the irs with target me for further harassment. the irs has delayed an obstructed my application for

tax-exempt status by using constitutional criteria. the types of questions asked by the irs included asking me to identify the political affiliation of my mentors and that i advise the iris of my political position on virtually every position of importance to me -- advice the irs of my position on virtually every position of importance to me. i had to inform the government in detail on what i am >> must do this. i am mentor young people, some of film -- some of whom are minors. imagine the reaction of their parents when i had to turn over the names of their children to the irs. is it not conceivable that i would be sued? did the ira's threatened to audit the parents of those -- did the irs didn't to audit the parents of those students? contour to the statements of

the targeting was not just the action of its agents in cincinnati. i've beach and aged in cincinnati. when i inquired as to why my application was taking so long, he said we had been waiting from guidance from our superiors as to your organization and similar organizations. we have received that guidance and you will receive your answer on a first in and first out basis. and not c4 like other organizations today, we share ideas. we reject expansion of the state beyond his legitimate authority and we dallas regard human liberty. i respectfully it is a co-equal

branch of the federal government invested with the authority to the power of the executive branch. i asked you act with courage and more resolve. my time was running low. >> you can conclude. >> i ask that you check the power of the executive branch. you will protect and defend human liberty for ourselves and our posterity. >> our next witness is the founder and president of the lawrence county tea party in south carolina. you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you for having me today. i am the president of the lawrence county tea party. we are a social welfare organization that seeks to oregon -- is a kid ourselves and the citizens on various issues pertinent in living in a free

country. voters work to educate by holding candidate forums. we typically meet once a month and hold an annual rally. we held our first tea party rally in april of 20 -- 2009 and incorporated with the state of south carolina in march of 2010. gpt --22, we filed status and filed an application. we received a letter that more information was needed to afterte our application hearing nothing, i called the irs and was told our case was still pending. in the meantime, we were still responsible for filing tax returns, which we have done. on november 14, 2011, we've

received a letter saying we may 990n.uired to file a form nothing more was heard until 2012 when we received a communication requesting extremely burdensome information which includes the following, provide a copy of our articles of incorporation, which we sent with our initial application in 2010, information about all our committees, including legislative, educational, and vetting and how much time and resources are dedicated to these activities. they wanted confirmation that these were from our web site. then they wanted samples from any of the social media sites including facebook. they asked for detailed information for all meetings, rallies and events with dates and names of speakers, agendas, and associated materials and if

a guest speaker made remarks concerning upcoming elections and whether our organization with a view on anything expressed and how much time or resources are devoted to these activities. it wanted to know how much time our resources were devoted to veetting candidates. vettinging -- candidates. they wanted a list of all candidates running for office and an explanation of those who did not participate, copies of written materials, including invitations to the candidates, copies of introductory statements made by us, and copies of questions asked of the candidates, what did the interviews were edited, a list of which interviews were posted on our website and an exclamation -- explanation of those not posted. more questions were asked including the date an elective

office for which power activities were held, copies of opening remarks from us, who asked questions, copies of all questions asked, copies of written materials, including invitations from -- to candidates and advertising, and the time and resources devoted to these activities. he also asked for a list of expenses for the past three years including any amount federal, state, or federal office. since i was already aware that the irs was targeting tea party whops, i contacted the elj, agreed to represent us without charge. it took hours of time and aggravation. by the end of december, we have filed the requested information with the irs. 2013, wehere 31,

received a request for more information, which included a request for the articles of incorporation, copies of issues sent out on -- e-mails of issues we deal with. i have provided quite a few of those, copies of free and paid ads placed in newspapers, press releases, and materials for distribution. we complied with these demands on march 5, 2013. it is now june 4, 2013. today, we have still heard nothing. i would like to say that our group is a small opera relation with little money and this is a complete waste of time by the irs in terms of any money they would collect if we are not tax exempt. three years of waiting for an answer is totally unacceptable. the irs needs to be fully investigated and held accountable for its incompetence, harassment, and targeting of conservative

groups. thank you. >> our next witness is the chairman of the national organization for marriage and a professor at the chapman university school of law. you are recognized for five minutes. >> thank you for taking these issues so seriously. i am chairman for constitutional and jurisprudence. hills also on the board of the act right legal foundation, which serves as co-counsel for also filed a, lawsuit. i am here as chairman of the board for the national organization for marriage. hat organization had its conferred inrt --

2008. the names of donors and their addresses appeared on the human- rights campaign website. a copy of our tax returns and our list of donors that was posted was redacted. our computer forensics people were able to on later be actions and discovered that the original s andent -- redaction discovered that the document had internal irs stamps that are placed on documents the irs receives by their computer system. we do not have a copy of the document with those irs stance on them. those only exist within the irs. this was posted on the website of the human rights campaign. jealously guard our donors as almost every other nonprofit does, particularly on the issue

we deal with. was our donors are identified, they are harassed and intimidated and are still away from supporting because we advance. this is unacceptable conduct in our democracy. we immediately requested an investigation by the department of justice. aree are felonies that committed against the national organization for merit. it is a felony punishable by a $5,000 fine and up to five years in federal prison for the unauthorized disclosure of confidential tax returns. we are a nonprofit, but that part of our tax returns is confidential as your 1040 forms. they invested in us try to determine whether a summit with our own ranks had disclosed our continental tax returns. of thenot have a copy

version of our tax returns that had been stamped on it, that was the last we heard of the investigation. that was summer of 2012. we begin filing the eighth period of freedom of information irs to trys with the to ascertain some of the information. we were stonewalled. the irs told us that any documents they had when happened and to be inspected general posted jurisdiction and they cannot disclose them to us. the second response to was was that we already answered your request and we do not answer think twice. on may 3 of this year, in default to a privacy act request where we asked for specific information where federal law allows us to request and there has been an investigation into disclosure of our tax returns, the inspector general also office told us the identity of

the source of this felony against us was protected tax return information they could not return to what. i ask you to think about the irony of that. there are things the committee could look at to help clear this problem. clarify that it is not the case that the prohibition of disclosure of our tax returns she'll seek whole point what culprit that committed a felony. we have no ability to bring a criminal prosecution for the celanese on our own. the department of justice has not done so. as a civil penalty provision, but we can only bring a suit against the united states for $1,000 for the one disclosure, not the hundreds of thousands of disclosures that were done by the human rights campaign when they post this on our website. i would like to see a clarification of that website -- clarification of that provision.

because to consider subpoenaing the folks that the human rights campaign to find out who posted on the website. find out who introduced the who froms and find out the irs disclose this information. the head of the human rights campaign had recently been named the national co-chair of the obama reelection campaign. this just smells i hope this campaign his to the bottom of it. our next witness is the founder valley teafernando party. shia since returning veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress you are recognized for

five minutes. >> john adams said facts are stubborn things. they get used as tools or weapons, but the way for us. we must seek them with the land but to and put them into words. but you and i speak different languages in this republic. you speak the language of power. i speak american grass roots. the language of liberty through property and civic virtue. we seldom speak to get about the rule of law unless it is ignored or by a lady. now in such a time. i have a story that bridges the distance between my state of california and this capital. but i say here must be said here. the pilgrims brought to this continent the land of liberty guided by the pursuit of life. they persevere for righteous freedom.

we visit here memorials for those who failed to service this country create a precedent for a ride to power. he stood up patriots living and then grant me the right to be a. it is my duty as an american citizen to speak here today. in october 2010, the san fernando valley patriots applied with the internal revenue 501(c)4 status as a social welfare organization. we heard nothing until february 2012 when i receive a package from the irs exempt organizations office in cincinnati ohio, which included a questionnaire with 35 items divided into 80 so point of inquiry. we had 20 days to comply without penalty, including penalties of perjury for failure to answer

all questions with facts that were true and complete. package read like the chilling words from the 1950's, are you or have you ever been? questions included video and audio transcriptions, copies of law handouts, political parties of speakers and an issues list. the irs started identifying -- wanted data on volunteers, employer identification numbers on businesses with which we associate. these are our donors. mike, the printer, who gave us a discount on handbills. dee, who donated posters, and gray, who made a stand out of pipes and wires. details on eins and our tax exempt organizations.

the national and center for constitutional studies, where we learn american history. the party patriots where we learned grassroots skills. on irs sought details communications with our legislators. even in southern california, that is protected free speech. my personal favorite was question number 43, which related to protest and ask for a listing of all committed violations, breaches of public order, or rest -- or arrest. ishink the irs needs to fix labelling machine. we are the san fernando valley patriots, not occupy oakland. process onhe costly july 2012. we survive on my credit card. like patriots before us, we pursue. the voice of the republic reside in our citizens, not in the

tongue of government. this dialogue is about the jackboot of tyrannies on the field of our founding document, to whisper the letters irs strikes a shrill note on main street, u.s.a. when it tramples on america's grassroots, many here the sound. this moment reflects the reality of governance in america. this time, we can to you. in time, you will come home to us. this time, we can portrait. in the time, the lines will fall. the voice of the people is the voice of god is irresistible, but different in america. our voice belongs to the free individual, not the collective mind. -- mob. stands under have freedom.eaven,

thank you. octor.nk you, dr founder ofis is the coalition of life for iowa. >> thank you. coalition for life of i what is a grass-roots, low-budget public charity founded in 2004 to provide prayer, education, and related activity about the sanctity of life from conception to natural death. throughout our history, we have organized and sponsored educational forums and engaged in peaceful, prayerful activities.

501(c)3 tax-ought exempt recognition from the irs by completing an application. i speak today so that what and the irs's demonstrated harassment and intolerance toward our message may not happen to others. centered onestions educational and potential political activity. our prayer books and our scientists. onapril 27, 2009, irs agents of the cincinnati office sent me a letter asking me about our age additional forum, whether we were trying to influence legislation or influence political campaigns. onhad already answered no the 1023 application.

i responded, answering all questions fully. irs agentsnt weeks, constant -- contacted me asking more questions about our activities. some questions i asked, she was unable to answer. she put me on hold to check with their superior or superiors. in june of 2009, ms. richards told me verbally that we needed to send in a letter with the entire board signatures stating that under perjury of law, we would not take it, protest, or organize pickets or protests outside of planned parenthood. upon receiving such a letter, she indicated that the irs would allow our applications to go through. we sent a follow-up letter to requestingpectfully where it stated we cannot

protest at planned parenthood. the irs never answered of the question. we were sent additional written request as follows. please explain how all of your activities, including prayer meetings held outside planned parenthood are considered educational as defined under 501(c)3. organizations exempt under 501(c)3 may present scientific data or facts. please provide the percentage of thatndsanization are spent on prayer groups. explain how they are considered educational. when we met at our next board meeting, we were disappointed

with the irs's request. we had worked so hard to get the application correct. we had a local attorney helping us. we understood that we could hold up signs with educational information about abortion and the sanctity of life without the irs questioning their validity. we never thought we would have to defend our prayer activity. as christians, we knew we needed to pray for a better solution to the unplanned pregnancy. why not at the source? personally, i wondered, who fights the i are s? what would be repercussions because? would there even be a hope to win. some board members were willing to sign the request letter. others refused to sign a statement that unfairly restricted first amendment rights. board member suggested we

connect the -- contact the thomas moore's sidekick, a public interest law firm. they help been -- contact the moore society. they help the little guy. after we submitted a lengthy letter detailing the law and our constitutional rights, the irs granted us tax-exempt status just one week after our attorney cent in that letter to the irs agent richard. no more mention was made of the irs required board statement and picketingng outside planned parenthood. we were fortunate, but not all are. our story has a happy ending. donors can claim a charitable tax exemptions for their contributions. with their help, we can carry out our educational and religious activity to promote respect for human life.

of iowa seekslife to save lives, help others, and improve our community. may our story of the i are s's irs'eaching -- overreaching in fire continued protection of the first men and rights. the-inspired continued protection of the first amendment rights. continued protection of first amendment rights. >> i would like to begin with a brief statement. i know you are primarily interested in hearing about the abuses of the internal revenue service. it is critically important that you understand just not with these abuses work, but with the irs was trying to stifle. in order to paint a clearer picture, i need to explain how we came into being. a husband and i had never been

involved in politics before 2008. we had always been patriotic and deeply proud of our country. we have always felt the united states is the greatest country in the world. in september 2008, when we had our first 17 -- $700 billion bailout, we were concerned. it was confirmation that our government was out of control. a few months later in january of 2009, we learned that our government was going to spend another seven to $87 billion. that money went to foreign nations, failing banks -- another $787 billion. we were worried and we knew we had to do something to sound the alarm. we knew the government had gone far beyond its habitual deficit spending. we knew that washington was not going to stop by itself. in the spring of 2009, we learn that others organizing concerned

citizens who believe their government was out of control. i watched tood neighborhoods handing out fliers for our april 15 event. when the day arrived, we were blown away by the large crowd. a few politicians came, but they did not speak. we wanted to give ordinary citizens a chance to speak their concern. already been had no party affiliation. i cannot tell you the attendees for republicans, democrats. did not matter. issue was what we collectively felt, that our government has failed us. there were no dues, no price for membership. our events were mostly educational. whatever expenses incurred were paid by donations and t-shirt sales. we are patriotic americans.

we peacefully assemble. we petition of government. we exercise the right to free speech and we do not understand why the government does not understand how to stop us. i am not here as a search for a vassal. i am not begging my lord for mercy. i am a born free american mother, wife, american citizen. i am telling my government you have forgotten your place. it is not your responsibility to look out for my well-being and to monitor my speech. it is not your right to assert an agenda. occupy existsyou to preserve american liberty. you were sworn to perform that duty. the abuses i will discuss occurred on your watch. it is your responsibility to make sure it doesn't happen again. here are the facts of my case. 501(c)4 infor a

october 2010. we received a letter dated november 2, 2010 stating that our application and our user fee payment had been received. it also stated we should be expecting to hear from someone within 90 days. however, the irs cannot initiate any contact with us for another 459 days. that was when i received a letter from the cincinnati office dated february 3, 2012. they cannotstated process of application which requested approximately 90 pieces of additional information about our organization.

the questionnaire stated that if the additional information was not returned by february 24, ourthe demands for information in the questionnaire shocked me as someone who loved liberty and the first amendment. i was asked to hand over my donor list including the amounts that they gave and the dates on which they gave them. 501(c) 4 organizations do not have to disclose donor information. i knew that. why don't they? they the demands were wanted me to identify all of my volunteers. they wanted to know if any of our donors or volunteers had run or would be running for office in the near future. remember, this was the 2012 election cycle. they wanted us to identify the office they would be running for. they wanted us to provide detailed contents of all speeches ever given some of the names of our speakers and their credentials. they wanted copies of written communications and contents of all other forms of communications to any legislative body, including my own representative. i was very uncomfortable with these questions, as you can imagine, and my husband and i discussed forfeiting our application. however, within days of reading through these questions, we

knew we were being targeted because that look tea party organizers across this nation were getting the same types of letters and questionnaires. seekwas when we decided to legal counsel. on march 6, 20 12, we retain counsel of the americans under for law and justice, they represented us in this matter. two weeks later, i received a letter dated march 16, 2012 asking that i provide the previously requested information. watch romans later, we received a letter dated july 9, 2012 stating that we had been approved to receive our tax exemption. wes was 635 days after applied. in conclusion, the tea party filled out a complete application. our organization fell within the boundaries of receiving a 501(c) 4 status. yes, our application was singled out solely because we had tea party in our name. government agents made invasive

and excessive demands for information they were not entitled to. congressman camp and members of this committee, this was not an accident. this is a willful act of intimidation to discourage a point of view. with the government did to our group in alabama is un-american. it is not a matter of firing or arresting individuals. the individuals who sought to intimidate us were acting as they thought they should, in a government culture that had little respect for its citizens. agencieshe agents and of the government do not understand that they are servants of the people. masters,k they are our and they are mistaken. i am not interested in scoring political points. i want to protect and preserve oceans and risked their up in,oe

lives to become a part of. and i am terrified it is slipping away. thank you. >> thank you very much. we will now move -- thank you all for your testimony. we will now move into the question and answer period of the hearing, and i will begin. on may 17, we heard from the inspector general that the irs had targeted certain americans on the basis of their personal beliefs am a that they were subject to extraordinary delays and they were inappropriate questions that were asked. you are asked to identify a list of all the issues that were important to your organization and to indicate your position on each issue. and you are asked about prayer meetings, including how they are considered educational, and are asked to explain in

detail the activities at these prayer meetings. yourhe percentage of time organization spends on prayer meetings. i would like to ask the panel to elaborate. are the inspector general's report findings consistent consistent with your experience of targeting delay and intimidation? >> yes, i will say that the expected general's reports are consistent. i do not think the report, however, is deep enough yet. i think we had more evidence among us to monopoly this panel but among other parties, organizations, that it is much deeper. i think this is just scratched the surface. >> all right. >> i do not actually read the inspector general's report, so what exactly was your question? >> just of those things i

mentioned -- were those consistent with your experience? >> you know, i think that it certainly seemed like a gross overreach of the irs. >> all right, thank you. >> our organization did not have those particular problems, but as our story has become more public, the number of communications i have received seeking legal counsel have raised a concern that a lot of americans have expressed. is this limited to the irs? the stories about people having osha and atf and fbi starting investigations on them, it has american citizens scared to death of what their government is capable of doing once they have crossed the threshold they have crossed here. afraidns are darn right of what is going on. we have got to restore the credibility of government and servants of the people, rather than our masters, as my colleague said. the number of stories i am getting the indicate those greater concerns is deeply

troubling. >> all right. >> an answer to your question, definitely yes. >> all right. >> and yes also. they had asked us to please explain in detail the activities and our prayer meetings. also please provide the percentage of time your organization spends on prayer groups as compared with the other activities in our organization. >> i would agree with the ig report, but i was disturbed that on page 20 the irs listed seven questions that they deemed inappropriate. however, many of the questions that i was asked and others were asked, like the contents of your prayers, some of the organizations that we have been involved with, they got questions asked about their family members. the questions i mentioned about running for office. asy do not deam it inappropriate, so i think we need to go back and look at those questions because most of them were inappropriate. letterously, getting a

from a federal agency asking for those detailed pieces of information about prayer meetings and what your family members are doing -- i read some of those questions. obviously, i came to the conclusion that the irs felt that there was a right or wrong position on those issues. and right and wrong activity regarding prayer meetings, for example. what was your impression when you received those questions? >> like i said, when i receive those questions, i felt defensive. i felt like that was not any of their business. i was not going to identify my volunteers. i was fearful for them. if their name was going to the irs, i know they would be scared. the questions were chilling. i was shocked i was being asked those questions. >> the most disturbing thing for us was having to agree that

we would not contest or picket at planned parenthood. and since there were no similar requests in the application, really we had no idea what they were even trying to control. if we went there in prayer, with that be considered picketing protesting? it was very troubling. >> i immediately reached my target heart rate when i opened the envelope. and i have anxiety. i felt betrayed. absolutely betrayed. >> when our donors were disclosed, and number of them called us expressing concern about that. the effort seems to have been designed to subject our donors to abuse, intimidation, to hold them accountable for donating in support of because of traditional marriage, to avoid

cat what what caught the businesses and target their marriage and to chill them from donating again so that we can keep up the political fight we are in the middle of. it was an unbelievably chilling effect, what happened to us. organization, the questions were not quite as intrusive as some of the of the goods. i was overwhelmed by the sheer love of my new detail that was being requested. to try to go back and track down this kind of stuff, it was difficult. but i think about it, i was looking back through. this is the paper work, my file state when i look back through all this information sent into the irs and i heard about these 157 visits between the head of the irs and president obama, i am concerns. it makes me nervous.

was my group been discussed? was our political activity being discussed? or we titans for this? is a very chilling. >> most disturbing to lynchpins of liberty, we work with of liberty, keep in mind that we work with students, some of the minors. that the irs would ask to know the identity of those students is unbelievably, unconscionably chilling. >> at the same hearing on the 17th, the acting commissioner steve miller some of the irs's action as horrible customer service. i know that i certainly take a different view of that, as do many members of this committee. he said that he would admit that we did horrible customer service and whether it was politically motivated or not is a different question. dr. eastman, i would say that if you had a bank and you disclosed confidential customer

information, would you call that horrible customer service or something else? >> a felony. i would hold the people that committed those felonies accountable. i would bring indictments and open up civil liability for the taxpayers affected, the damages to our donor base are incalculable and i would prosecute those responsible. >> thank you. mr. levin is recognized. >> thank you very much. let me just say a few things in response to your testimony. i do think it is our obligation to get the frat -- get the facts and not deal in conjecture. indeed, i think the more that we deal with conjecture the less likely we are to get the facts. let me just say to you that i think we've been very much disagree about the work of planned parenthood, is my guess.

i must say, the question about whether you were picketing or protesting before planned parenthood was totally worse than an inappropriate. you should not have been asked to that. and as personnel of the irs are inquired of, i would think that may be looked into. mr. eastman, let me just say to you that this issue was raised at the hearing with the inspector general. and he indicated, mr. miller indicated in response to a question from you about the donor list, he said that he

believes they made a referral to the inspector general. he was later asked about that and he said that those situations were t.i.t.t.a. i believe what they found were that those disclosures were inadvertent and that there had been disciplined in one of those cases for someone not following procedures. but obviously i will let mr. george speak to that. that was his testimony. and then our chairman asked mr. george about that. it would appear, from his testimony, that it was being investigated by the inspector general. that is all we know about it at this point.

whether it continues to be investigated by the inspector general. so, let me just finish. i just want to emphasize, i said in my opening statement that we also need to look at the larger issue of 501 c 4, of the statutory language and how in fact it is now being utilized, but i want to finish by just reading the last part of my opening statement. please be assured, and we said this to each and everyone of you and the american public, please be assured that we take seriously our responsibility to ensure that congress gets to the bottom of what happened here. that those responsible are held accountable and that safeguards are in place to ensure that this does not happen again.

surely the democratic side we will do that. trust on a bipartisan basis that we will work together to do that. >> mr. johnson is recognized. >> thank you for holding this important hearing. the american people want, need, and deserve to know the truth. it is our responsibility to demand it and hold those responsible accountable. i was particularly struck by the testimony from several of the tea party witnesses. as you know back in my district it appears that the patriots to advocate the fiscal responsibility of the rule of law and limited government have also been a target of the irs. in july of 2010 a group applied for 5014c status and as of today they have yet to receive a response, which is absurd.

it has been nearly three years. in february of 2012 they set up 19 questions, including such onerous and irrelevant ones as relating to the employment of the group's key officials. mr. chairman, i would like to submit for the record the cbs- dfw news story entitled two conservative groups targeted by the irs. let me just say what it says here. the irs wanted to list all of their volunteers. everything that they did, it won an accounting of every dollar donated, what it was spent on, and a record for any fliers the may have handed out. may i submit that for the record? >> without objection. >> thank you. the pattern of intimidation toward certain americans is frankly in my view of american.

the bottom line is that the irs has been used as a political weapon. ms. kenny, i understand you work with veterans returning from combat with posttraumatic stress disorder. as a veteran i would like to start off by saying thank you for doing that. please describe your work. >> i work with veterans who have been deployed throughout iraq and iran, most of the desert community and their families. the toll that takes on the families is extraordinary. i work with their dogs. i am going to cry. i see people that are untouched. no one goes to hug a soldier unless they are family. i have this one guy that comes and he says -- where is my dog? he picks the dog up for the session and pats my dog, little lady.

they are on the front lines and everyone on this panel has their back. i hope that you do as well. >> yes, ma'am. as you know i was in the military and i understand that. thank you for doing that. did you ever think he would have to deal with pages, ages, and pages of intrusive questions from the irs? and when you come home from a day of helping our troops, who protect us every minute of every day, i bet the last thing you want to do is deal with onerous questions from the irs. can you talk about the burden of the questions and how many there were? >> the burden on me personally was extraordinary. i think i could have purchased stock in kinkos, there were almost 200 pages of documentation, leaflets, agendas. i have one here because they

asked if we have a candidate for certain parties. this is a list of candidates i invited for one of our forums. both democrats and republicans, back and forth. i heard nothing from any of the democratic candidates. not even an rsvp regret. the republicans that could not come, they sent their presentation. so did the libertarians. our group is primarily educational. we have operated as a 501c4. we have done this to get word out on the constitution, to get people to be informed about how to vote and where to go to vote. if we go to the website you will see democrats, republicans, libertarian groups listed in los angeles county. >> how much time did the irs give you to respond to those letters? >> 20 days after the first interrogatories.

there were three questionnaires that were sent. >> it probably made it impossible for you to answer those questions. thank you again for the great work the to do to help our veterans. i appreciate you standing up for them as they stand up for us. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me thank each and everyone of you for making the effort to come here to point out where our government has let us down and in helping us to understand the problem with those people who were directly and adversely affected so that we can better do our job. i do not want to forget miss kenney. i hope that everyone who is listening, whatever you can do for the veterans, whatever anyone can do to help those people who put their lives at stake and they are coming home to joblessness and homelessness,

i want to commend you, as did my colleague, for what you do, and hope that it is encouragement for everybody to do something. now, with the irs, most of us know that this is an experience of a telephone call from the irs. somehow historically it is a very uncomfortable feeling. i hope that you would all agree that the 90,000 people that work for the internal revenue service are dedicated, hard-working civil servants. we have found a cancer someplace in cincinnati. we have to find out what caused this. so that no americans would be subject to the type of bias and

discrimination that some of you, and many others who are not here, have suffered. and we have to make certain that it does not happen again. even more important, to try to find out just how many people were contaminated by the presence of those people that have done this to our country. dr. eastman, i think that you would agree that we have to find criminal intent. we do not know how anyone could do something like this and just think it was in the ordinary course of business, but as a former federal prosecutor, you as a doctor of the law and a former clerk to a member of the united states supreme court, but you know that. i have been trying to get the same information that you spoke

of in your testimony. they said that it was all being investigated and could lead to a grand jury inquiry. i think that if you and i kept in touch with each other i would be satisfied with following whether or not our government is actually pursuing this investigation in the manner that you as an american could be proud that this branch of government intends to do the job that is expected of us. so. i do not want these hearings to just pass and indict an administration, but more importantly to indict these civil servants who work every day for the taxpayers. i just want to close by saying that when it comes to political

support, most people know that i am a democrat through the marrow of my bones but what makes our country great is that everybody wants a better country and loves the country that we are in. and we need all of these views. whether you came over with the pilgrims or some other way against your will, we are here to improve the quality of life for our country and be a beacon for democracy for the entire world. i do not know whether our political system can afford to be using a charitable organizations to get candidates elected. i will only ask you this as a professor of constitutional law, dr. eastman, and the fact that people's identity should be confidential if it concerns the activity, but if you are a democrat, hey, put it out there.

if you are a republican, put it out there. if you are making contributions, do it, be proud of it. it just sounds, dr. eastman, like an undercover thing to take an organization that is primarily for the public good and be giving political campaign funds to it. your view, doctor? >> you will have to respond be briefly, time has expired. >> if you wanted to get rid of all tax-exempt status and create a level playing field that way, that would be fine, but what is intolerable is to have a set of rules for one side and another set for another. quite frankly what is happening to the national organization for marriage donors, the level of intimidation is starting to rival what went on when the supreme court shutdown during naacp vs. alabama. there is a reason that people want to keep their activities confidential, so that they are not harassed out of the political process.

when it rises to the level of naacp verses alabama it is important to help protect the confidentiality so that people are not scared away from exercising their constitutional rights. >> organizations -- >> time has expired. >> our first hearing revealed potential abuses of power by the irs, including targeting organizations based on political beliefs, leaking private taxpayer information to the media, perhaps the campaigns of outside groups. misleading congress for almost two years. we should be listening to the victims of those abuses of power. thank you for being here today. a small business owner in the midwest, concerned citizens from alabama, you are plenty tough. how frightening is a government

so powerful that it can target you, an average american citizen, for simply expressing your constitutional views in wanting to be engaged in this republic? how frightening is that power? >> for me it was very frightening. i did not even think we had a hope to try and stand up to it. personally, i thought we would just have to send the letter and get our 501c3. if we did not have it, some of our donors may be would not contribute to us. so it was power that the irs had over us and over the success of our group by not granting it. fortunately some of our board members were strong about it and would not give up their first amendment rights.

even though we are not about protesting. we are not even about that, we are about education and about praying for an end to abortion. some of our members will take a sign. that is very small. still, we did not want to give up the rights that we had to be able to do that. fortunately we had some attorneys that helped us, but without them i am not sure what would have happened. >> thank you. >> i do not know how to put into words how scary it is when a government agency comes after an individual or small organization. i think the most alarming, the most scary is when you allow the government to go so far and you do not stop them, they go farther. pretty soon we are in tyranny and it is hard to put into words. it looks like that -- using

these agencies as a weapon against citizens feels scary and like tyranny. >> that is exactly what these hearings are about. the white house continues to claim that all of this was done by a couple of rogue employees in cincinnati. do you believe that the leaking of your personal taxpayer information was done by a few rogue employees? >> i do not. let me respond to the comment about this being inadvertent. it was not inadvertent that someone redacted the information. it was not inadvertent that it was given to our political opponents. they deliberately provided our donor list to political opponents of hours who had been seeking that information for a long time. if that is inadvertant, that word no longer means anything.

>> in addition to being an attorney, you teach civics class is. do either of you believe that this could happen in america? did you ever imagine that the government could target you like this? >> that was not something that i was thinking about. i thought that we lived in a free republic. i feel that our country has turned a corner into tyranny. i have honestly lost sleep over being in fear of what our government might do next. >> we teach about this very thing. the irony is it is happening under our noses. >> probably something you did not include in your original lesson plan? >> we did not. >> we have a lot of work to do in this investigation. it will be thorough and deliver it. thank you all for being here today. mr. chairman? >> thank you. mr. mcdermott? >> thank you.

freedom of speech is no doubt one of our most important fundamental rights. it is unacceptable in every way for a government agency to on fairly scrutinize any organization because of their political affiliations. the irs has made a mistake. while i think it was a case of foolish account management and dangerously chosen short cuts, i will not hesitate to say that the irs was wrong. as i listen to this discussion, i would like to remind everyone that what we're talking about here, none of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. we are talking about whether or not be american taxpayers will subsidize your work. we are talking about a tax break. if you did not come in and ask for this tax break, you would never have had a question asked of you. you could go out there and say anything you wanted in the

world. i get the feeling that many of you and my republican colleagues just do not believe, or believe that you should be free from political targeting, but free from any scrutiny at all. the purpose of a c3 or c4 tax exemption is to enable easier promotion of public good, not political work. it is the responsibility of the irs to determine which groups are choosing the correct exempt status and which are trying to manipulate the system to avoid taxes and hide political organizations and campaign donors. without oversight, a status meant for charities becomes a machine for political money laundering. do you think that is far fetched? speak to speaker gingrich. in 1997 he was fined $300,000 by the ethics committee of the house of representatives for

funneling money from the abraham lincoln opportunity fund to where he was chairman in order to promote the takeover of the house and arouse republican activists. that is what happens when you do not ask questions. each of your groups is highly political. from opposing health care reform to the marriage and abortions, you are all entrenched in some of the most controversial political issues in the country. with your applications you were asking the american public to pay for that. many of you host and endorse candidates, with a line between permitted and non-permitted political activity that can be very fine. it is important that the taxpayers, the taxpayers know

which side you fall on. if there were an organization promoting taxpayer funding for abortions, would do not want to know what they were using that political money for? or for what candidates they were backing? what about a group that wanted to promote voting without identification? or what if -- a few years ago there was an increase in communist candidates in this country and they wanted to be tax-exempt? would you not want to be sure that the self declared tax-free classification of those groups was correct? the mistake here was that the staff organizing the organization's use the names of the organizations rather than the work they do and asked improper questions to figure that out. it is clearly wrong. it was inept, stupid, and a whole lot of other things. but let's not get lost. during the bush administration liberal groups were targeted without any concern for anyone on this committee.

republicans were looking for a conspiracy where there is not one. mr. issa says that he can feel that in his gut that someone has broken the law. ask yourself which is more likely, that mid-level overwhelmed employees made stupid, irresponsible shortcuts? or that there is in the administration wide plot to take down community organizers? let's not forget that this happened under an irs commissioner appointed by george bush and investigated by a republican inspector general. what happened to you was on a fair. it was unfair. and incredibly inconvenient. but it was a mistake. our job is to make sure it does not happen again. i have not heard a single word about what questions you think we should be able to ask you about your tax-exempt request. anything else is simply

political theater. it is diverting attention from what we ought to be doing on this committee. rewriting the law if it is wrong. >> thank you, time is expired. mr. ryan is recognized. >> i am going to deviate from my original question in response to what i just heard. [lots of cheering] >> mr. chairman? mr. chairman? >> welcome to washington. >> the committee will be in order. >> we heard gingrich, we heard bush. we had the former irs commissioner who knew about political targeting long before congress was told, implying that they were responsible for the targeting because they chose to apply for tax-exempt status? so you are to blame here? do you think your targeted based upon your political beliefs, your religious beliefs, or just

because you chose to apply? >> our beliefs. our views. >> we had the acting commissioner miller here a couple of weeks ago and we asked him, did groups with the word organizing or progressive in the name, were they targeted? the answer was no. we know -- this is one of the facts that we now know. people were singled out because of their beliefs. back to my original line, mr. kookogey? your 29 months? >> and counting. >> you have not been approved yet. >> i have not been approved. >> you were asked 90 questions, asking you to provide a list of your members and donors, political affiliation of your mentors, and your political positions on virtually every issue important to you? >> yes, sir.

>> you are teaching [read names] and it is 29 months in waiting? >> yes, sir. >> mr. eastman, i want to get this bill down. dr. eastman, thank you -- excuse me. you have proved that the irs and a group of individuals at the irs committed a felony, you have proof to this and nothing has occurred to see or find justice? >> correct. the federal law requires that we be notified if there is an indictment brought. we have not been. we were refused any answer to that request. we have identified the document came from within the i.r.s. >> you have proof the i.r.s.

leaked your confidential donor information to a group that opposes your point of view and your donors or harassed as a result of that. is that correct? >> correct. >> the i.r.s. told you if your board signed a letter that if they would no longer protests, they could receive their tax- exempt status, it is that correct? >> that is correct. she said it was ready to go through. everything was in order. >> we have not heard any

testimony that this is happening to groups that have the opposite views. to suggest these citizens are to blame for applying, i do not understand how anyone can make that conclusion. i yield. >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here. i noticed the makeup of the panel from the south and other parts of the country. i grew up in alabama and i live in georgia. no individual deserves the type of treatment that you received or experience.

to target groups based solely on political views is completely unacceptable. it is a disservice to the american people. it is also a disservice any concern on americans. since the days of the bush and administration, groups have been scrutinized. we must be honest with ourselves and with each other. this has nothing to do with red verses blue. between 2004 and 2006, many liberal groups including the an

naacp were targeted by the bush administration. where was the outrage then? we must exercise -- as we sit here today, let us also remember that the i.r.s. has many good, hard-working employees that do a great job enforcing the tax code. we must not let the action of a misguided few poison the image of the entire agency. we must find a bipartisan solution to a bipartisan problem. thank you for taking your time, especially from alabama where i grew up.

thank you for being here and i yield back my time. >> thank you. mr. kookogey, you received a letter from miss lois lerner, is that correct? you also received a letter from lois lerner. do you also received a letter? did anyone else received a letter from lois lerner? we have three witnesses they received letters from lois lerner. mr. miller said this was confined to just cincinnati. we have conflicting statements and we need to get to the bottom of that.

mr. eastman, can you name the treasury inspector general officials with whom you discussed your case with? >> not off the top of my head but i can provide that after the hearing to the committee. >> do you know if the leak of your tax information, did it come from washington, d.c., or cincinnati? >> i have no reason to believe that it came from cincinnati. >> ok. i think we should try to figure out and perhaps the inspector general has that information. of where this information was leaked from. that would dispel the cincinnati narrative that is out there.

the i.r.s. agent who handled at your case is miss richards? does she have a first name? >> she never gave a first name. our attorney did. >> could you provide the names to this committee? >> yes. >> did ms. richards ever indicate she was seeking guidance from anyone else in the i.r.s.? >> a couple of times she put me on hold and said, i must check with my supervisor. she never gave me a name. >> were they in cincinnati someplace else? >> i do not know.

>> did you correspond with any other agents about your case? i did not speak with them on the phone. >> you do not know if it came from washington or cincinnati. >> the address on the letter said "cincinnati." >> i think we should bring miss richards and others, we should try to figure at who these people are and conduct interviews with these folks. i remain concerned about mrs. lerner, who pleaded the fifth and said she did not do anything wrong. we should probably try to get her before the committee.

and her colleague, mr. joseph grant, who was promoted and then resigned. i think they could shed some light on the constitutional rights of these witnesses and the many rights of these americans, and i yield back. >> thank you for calling today's hearings. what we have heard is very troubling. the i.r.s. touches many americans. these reports are certainly unacceptable. i am troubled by the mismanagement of the i.r.s. in handling tax exempt applications.

acting director miller based on a question, highlighted a case of a constituent who was penalized a few years later. americans should be able to rely on the advice of the i.r.s. without punishment. failure to provide congress information it is unacceptable, as well. it is unbelievable that lois lerner testified without informing the committee as to what she was going to say at the aba conference. i appreciate your hearing and calling it today. we need to get to the bottom of these problems.

we can't forget something that is even more egregious than some of the actions of the irs, and that is the underlying problem. after citizens united, the i.r.s. was flooded with applications from groups seeking the status of 501c4. super pac's must disclose their donors, which 501c4 do not. both groups have taken advantage of the status. there were democratic groups that were targeted. previous testimony indicates that. that should be noted as well. i hope there will be a review of 501c4 status.

i appreciate your work with veterans. we have 1.7 million new veterans. you indicated you have an invitation that you extend to a wide range of candidates. you indicated democrats did not attend based upon the invitation that you have extended. why do you think? >> i have no idea. >> thank you. >> thank you for providing this hearing. i would like to remind members that this is far beyond 501c4 status.

there was a gentleman, justin thomas. i would like to submit some information on that case. congresswoman schmidt submitted to the i.r.s. questions regarding why mr. thomas was question 26 on a 501c3 application. they have not received their status to this day and this american does not know why he was question number 26. i was shocked to find out on friday on another matter dealing with the i.r.s. this lawyer represents an organization that is a taxable

nonprofit. they filed their first tax return with the i.r.s. in february of this year, mr. chairman. we the people convention, inc. of ohio, it is their name. they received a letter from the i.r.s. "we received your form 1120. we are sorry we cannot process your returned as filed. our records indicate we the people is a political organization and you are required to file for tax-exempt status."

the i.r.s. had no other information other than the name, we the people. a lawyer wrote back and the letter said this organization was formed as a nonprofit organization in ohio and the stated purpose is a coming together of citizens for the purpose of sharing information and ideas as well as for any lawful purposes. they hold an annual meeting and the organization is not involved in any activities designed to influence the outcome of any elections. it can claim tax exempt status and has not attempted to claim such status.

we are only scratching the surface of where this goes. this organization is a taxable nonprofit. for those who think this is about tax exempt status, this shows we're only scratching the surface. the testimony is fabulous. i have to tell you, this is shocking to me. i yield back. >> thank you. thank you for your testimony. a career republican who would work for two republican senators and was appointed by george h. w. bush.

he identified wrongdoing at the i.r.s. i agree with his findings. agree that any of the applications that were identified that were set aside, 96 of them appearing to be of a political orientation like the groups that are here today and perhaps one like progress taxes in my home town, which received a similar letter. whatever the political beliefs. the inspector general is right. folks should not have to worry about that. the inspector general had more to say after a strong opening statement about what the report

signified. i asked him specifically if he had found any evidence of the corruption at the i.r.s. he said, no, he had not. i asked whether our tax system is rotten at the core. he indicated no, definitely not. i asked him if there was evidence to the charge that the i.r.s. takes who wins and loses in america. he responded, i do not believe that is the case. there is a question and a problem at the i.r.s. with regard to the basic issue of which groups the taxpayers should subsidize. we do not subsidize the democratic or republican or libertarian party.

we should not subsequent groups that act in a similar way to promote political activity. this congress was very clear on that point in 1913 and in what is now 501c4. they must be operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare. through a rule that seems to conflict directly with the clear wording of the statute did the i.r.s. act to give itself discretion to explore organizations that are here before us today. i think the i.r.s. is wrong here. in more recent years, suggested

we would have tens of millions, hundreds of millions of tax subsidized money awarded with secret contributors into the election process to pollute our democracy. an organization, citizens for a responsibility and ethics in washington petition the irs to act about this and to go back to the original wording of the statute that had existed since 1913. the i.r.s. did not respond except with a "we will think about it" type letter. another petition for the treasury department to act on this matter. i have asked them to do the same. i don't believe the internal

revenue service, the treasury department should be providing tax subsidies to organizations that are not engaged exclusively in social welfare. this is the second hearing on this subject in a short period of time. we have had some 37 of votes on whether to repeal the affordable health care act. i'm sure this is not the last hearing on this topic. the two are closely related. the i.r.s. has an important function to reply caring about the provisions of the affordable care act. it is to access those families who are entitled to premium insurance. the i.r.s. needs to carry out

that job. i yield back. >> thank you. the inspector general's report was an audit. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the supreme court has already decided this issue. some of my friends may disagree with the supreme court decision. others might disagree on the decision about forcing americans to buy health insurance. it is the law of the land. there was a hearing two weeks ago.

mr. miller accepted the report. he said he expected it fully. he did not agree with the use of the word "targeted." mr. miller would not agree that certain individuals or organizations were treated differently in this process. he did say we provided poor customer service. poor customer service. was mr. miller asked to resign by the president of the united states because he presented poor customer service? who else provided poor customer

service that should be asked to resign? that would be my question. we know it was more than poor customer service. mr. miller goes on to say, "it was just poor customer service." then he came up with excuses. then he said this was an effort by good employees to be efficient. to be efficient? by asking you hundreds of questions about your personal lives? that is efficiency? i don't think so.

the word inadvertent was used as we talked about the tax information. it is not inadvertent. there is more investigation to do. i am a retired police officer. there are a lot of questions to ask here. i try to find out who came up with the criteria that all of you have to respond to. he didn't remember at first but give me the title of person he spoke with. he said it was nancy marx. did any of you speak with nancy marx? mr. chairman, i would suggest that we think about having nancy marx appear before this panel to find out what she knew.

there are other names that have been been brought up here today. i would ask whether any other names for many of the panelists do you have any of the names of people you have spoken with, could you provide those? i'll start with mr. kookogey. could you please provide me with any names. >> the first agent on my case was sheila mae robinson. then my case was switched to the desk of ron bell. then it was passed to mr. mitch steele.

the most recent letter was from a woman whose name i cannot pronounced. >> we will get that from a letter. >> joseph herr. >> i will provide those names to the committee. >> mitch steele. >> other names possibly? >> i will provide that. robert shulls. i have an id number. ronald bell. lois lerner. i have my time line and all these names are in there as well as the id number. >> thank you.

>> thank you. >> i want to thank all the witnesses for being here. miss kenney, i want to think you for your work with veterans. i appreciate that very much. i want to state for the record. i believe it is outrageous and wrong and we must do everything that we can to fix this. mrs. belsom, you said that this needs to be investigated and those responsible need to be held responsible. i agree. i believe any targeting of any group needs to be held accountable.

it is important that we hear about these abuses. we all know that it is bad and it is wrong and that we know we need to fix it. that it needs to -- it never should have happened, and we need to know what we need to do to get it fixed. we need to make sure that it never happens to conservative groups, we need to make sure that never happens to liberal groups, we need to sure that it never happens to any group. report said at the cincinnati staff of the irs had questions about the law and how it was to be applied. and that they were not given adequate guidance nor supervision, even after they asked for it. at its bad management

best. i think that the subsequent stories we've seen about the staff retreats that the irs has been taking, i think bolsters the fact that there is huge bad management in that organization. share atruth is -- we little bit of that responsibility. we have oversight over that operation. we need to be bearing down to figure out how in the world can you even do that stuff without somebody knowing about it am a without somebody recognizing it -- the idea that you just take staff and you go off someplace and make him a not even rated build to try to tilt -- a better staff arrangement. not one of us could do that and our office. this committee cannot do that. why is it that a bureaucracy can do that? we have a response ability in

this committee. i think we ought to get to doing our work and make sure that we fix this problem. we don't need to hear any more witnesses. we know it was bad, it is terrible to you and everybody any, it is terrible when government entity does not do their job and puts taxpayers through the ringer. let's get it fixed, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> thank you. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. eastman, how did you find out that your donor list had been leaked to the irs? >> it appeared on a website by the human rights campaign, which is our risible political opponent your great story in your organization happened to be looking at that. >> somebody called to our attention. we saw that there were reductions. this is the march 30, march 30, 2012. within a few days, our computer

forensics people had been able to on layer the redaction and we sell they came from within the irs itself. >> thank you. on the screen,, i have some documents side-by-side. , ise documents were taken believe, from the "huffington post." one of these are the schedule b forms attached to our returns. like all nonprofits we have to make public but the schedule b which is the list of our donors is confidential. the document on the left with the redaction across the center is the document that appeared on the website. the document on the right is that same pdf file but with the redaction layer removed. and you see across the center diagonally the internal i.r.s. document number that is affixed by the i.r.s. computer. and at the top of the page you see the language this is a live tax return from the internal i.r.s. system for official use only.

>> so this is the first time that you became aware of this on the huffington post and it was taken from your adversarle group's website? >> yes. the human rights campaign, which is our chief adversary posted it on the their website. any number of other media outlets then linked to that tax return. >> so at that point in time you went on to try to determine what course of action the i.r.s. or department of treasury was going to take. is that correct? >> that's correct. we filed specific requests for investigation with the treasury inspector general for tax administration. and because there are felony violations at issue here, we filed a request for investigation with the department of justice criminal division as well. >> and you were stone walled? >> well, the investigation -- and i've got the full list of the agents that were involved. they wanted to close off the possibility that this had just been leaked by somebody internal to our own

organization. i think the evidence the document speaks for itself that it came from the i.r.s. but i suppose it's possible that somebody might have asked for a copy of our own tax return back and then went to the trouble of leaking it so they wanted to close that door. but once that was closed that was the last we heard. and that was the summer of 2012 almost a year ago. >> but that document with the number on there, the i.r.s. number on there indicates that this came from the i.r.s. >> the document -- the i.r.s.'s own internal manual specifically says that that is put on every tax return automatically for any return that gets filed with the i.r.s. and it's not a document that we have in our records because we of course filed the clean version and once it's filed that's the document that gets placed on the i.r.s. document for internal official use only. >> and you've been not notified despite a foia request and other means of action, you've been not notified as to what recourse or actions are being

taken as of this date? >> in fact, the federal law requires that we be notified if anybody is in charged with illegal disclosure of our returns. we have received no such notification. our specific request tied directly to what's authorized to be disclosed to the taxpayer whose returns were illegally disclosed the status, the results whether the invest gration remains opened or closed whether our complaints were substantiated or not, this is the language from the regulation itself. we asked for that particular information and we were told we could not have it because any results of their investigation was itself protected taxpayer information. >> thank you. i have to say that ranking member 11 mentioned avoiding speculation i think in his opening statement. and i can say and it's pretty eth here that we've seen an egregious a abuse, intimidation

and mismanagement and it cannot be tolerated. we've got to get to the bottom, we've got to get to the facts of what happened. and those responsible will be held to account under the fully under the law. and the other thing that we have to do is we have to restore the checks and balances in -- which provides the opportunity for congress to do legitimate oversight and i have to tell you, mr. eastman, this is egregious and we have -- we're going to get to the bottom of it and the i.r.s. can no longer withhold this information. we will get it. thank you. >> thank you. >> mr. chairman, the question before us today is who decides who gets to participate in the public square? sit bureaucrats? or is it the american people? i am heartened today and i know that there's sort of an ominous feeling about what's going on but i'm actually heartened by the example of you six who have come forward because you know what you did?

you kept faith in america. you kept faith. and no matter how big the as well as were, no matter how big the storm cloud was, no matter how overwhelming the feeling was, you were faithful and god bless you for being faithful. and we're here in a country where some of us were trying to reach out now and we're all in this together and we're trying to say, look, this is a great country that we have. and it is worth celebrating, it is worth defending, it is worth articulating these founding values. and i am so deeply appreciative of your willingness to keep faith when it was overwhelming. but look, history is filled with this story and it always works out well when those who are entrusted with responsibility -- that is us -- listens to the complaints of the public, sorts out fact from fiction, and then do our work.

and i'm telling you what, based on your faithfulness i think this comes to a very good end. now, let me tell you a quick storyifment an unrelated federal agency, the federal election commission, intervened unfairly in a 1996 election for the united states senate in the state of illinois. friend of mine, former law partner was the republican nominee, al savely. he was falsely accused of breaking federal law. the federal election commission sued him. the case was dismissed. the federal election commission tried to manipulate him into paying an outrageous fine. the federal election commission kept losing and lugse and losing. finally al says i'd like to speak with the person with authority because surely if they understood the facts they would dismiss this case. the person at the other end of the phone in charge of enforcement said we will dismiss this case if you pledge to never run for office again.

the person at the other end of that phone was loice learner. in the words of my son steve, i'm just saying. now, as we're listening and we hear about these first amendment rights of yours cumulatively that have been trampled, there is something particularly egregious i think about the first of our first freedoms, that is our freedom to worship. our freedom to avoid government compulsion as it relates to matters of faith. and what you have described is the long arm of the federal government coming in to you coming in to your organization and essentially telling you we'll tell you what to think. we'll tell you how to pray. heaven help us.

this congress opens on a daily basis in prayer. moments ago this place opened in prayer. we have prayer groups that are honey combed throughout the capitol praying for god's mercy for this country, praying for wisdom, praying for strength, praying for clarity. and we've got a federal agency that comes in and tries to get in to your business? it's an outrage. and so what you're sensing today from those of us on this committee is a sense of real clarity about what's going on. this is not about ambiguity in the law. this is not about any such thing. this is about abuse of power. and so what you have done -- and i thank you for doing this -- what you have done is you have lit a lamp and you have clanged a bell and you have rallied people around you to make this right. and so i know, i speak for many on this committee. we will get this right.

i yield back. >> thank you. mr. blumenauer is recognized. >> thank you, mr. president -- mr. chairman. i too appreciate the witnesses coming together and telling their stories. i think we are all united in denouncing the treatment that you were accorded. and especially the disclosure of confidential tax information. and i'm looking forward to the committee moving forward as i think everybody has expressed to get to the bottom of it. i appreciate our colleague mr. thompson talking about the committee doing its job, figuring out what we do going forward. but part of what is coming clear to me is that there is a fundamental flaw in the way that we have allowed a clear statute to be modified by a regulation that invites abuse.

it puts bureaucrats in a position where they can legitimately start probing around these questions. and i think that is inappropriate. part of the problem that i see is illustrated by part of dr. eastman's testimony where he talks about his chief adversary in their political struggles. the human rights campaign. that doesn't sound -- at least in my mind when we're dealing primarily with the engaged in promoting the common good and general welfare that somehow we're talking about political adversaries. the national organization for marriage established in 2007 to pass a proposition in california to stop our gay and lesbian citizens from marrying the person that they love.

promoting social welfare. an internal national organization of marriage document last year stated the organization seeks, quote, to drive a wedge between gays and blacks by promoting, quote, african american spokespeople for marriage thus provoking same sex marriage supporters into, quote, denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. and to int represent, interrupt the assimulation of latinos into dominant angelo culture by making the stance against same sex marriage a key badge of latino identity. and nuns of this has been denied by the national association organization for marriage. it's called for pror traying president obama as a social radical and seeking to cast same sex marriage in a negative light connecting to issues like pornography. social welfare?

i think not. it's everybody's right to participate in politics. and while you should. but i think having organizations parading as being social welfare organizations and then being involved in the complitcal combat hearkens back to why the statute 100 years ago said that they were prohibited and why whole heartedly agree with my colleague saying we ought to stop this regulation interpretation from 1959 that invites people to raise vast sums of money and keep it secret and to engage in political activity and some of it i think not necessarily promoting the social welfare of our country everybody ought to play by the same rules we ought to go back to the original intent, we ought to eliminate opportunities for bureaucrats

in the internal revenue service making these judgments about whether it's primarily social welfare or not. it shouldn't be involved with politics at all. and until i think we do our job as a committee to reinstate that original intent that we overruled that regulation, we won't be doing our job completely. root out the problem, find out who leaked confidential information, make sure that this is administered properly down in the ranks of the i.r.s. but let's stop this charade of pretending that these are social welfare organizations and admit that they are political, treat them as such, and play by the same rules that everybody on the committee plays for when we're involved in politics. thank you. and yeefl. >> dr. price. >> mr. chairman, i want to

thank you very much for continuing this evaluation of what has been described during this hearing today as chilling, shocking, fearful, felt betrayed, unconscionable, unbelievable, frightening, intimidating. using the government as a weapon against citizens. sometimes when we walk out of the capitol in the evening we have some significant emotion about something that has just occurred during the course of that day. i'm going to walk out today saddened -- saddened that we find ourselves in the situation in our government is activity with its citizens that results in those adjectives, in those descriptions. i want to echo mr. ross cam's

compliments to you all. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you for your trust and your faith in our government and in our system. it's that trust that is being eroded though. and our system of government only works if that trust exists. and our job is to restore that trust. and your involvement today, your participation today, your participation over the past number of years will help greatly restore that trust. one way to do that by the way tax institute fundamental reform, have an i.r.s. that isn't powerful. how about an i.r.s. that just processes forms? how about an i.r.s. that says you've identified what you make, you've identified what kind of exemptions may exist

and this is what you owe and maybe it's that simple. maybe it's that simple. dr. eastman i'm stunned at the at the magnitude of the disclosure that you bring before us today and i'm sorry that i wasn't aware of the significance of it before today. but -- and people have asked you very, very specific questions and to inform the american people and inform this committee. i want to ask you about your donors. your donors being listed publicly. you mentioned that they were harassed. what put some flesh on that. what does that mean? how have the donors been harassed? >> i can begin with the story of proposition 8 in california. and before i get to that i really have to respond to the scurluss things that were said on the other side. representative blumenauer, it's your kind of statements that have empowered i.r.s. agents to make determinations about which

organizations qualify for the public good and which do not. the notion that defending traditional marriage doesn't qualify as a defense of the public good is beyond epreposterous and how sad it is, representative dogget, how sad it is that efforts to educate about our constitution have become a partisan political issue that you think people ought not to get tax exempt status for that. let me go back now to this question. beginning in proposition 8. people's names were disclosed as donors, our businesses were boycotted. if there were an employee that had a business their business was boycotted they were harassed, assaulted, vandalized 57bd this is now per vaded across the nation every time our donor list gets disclosed to the point that our donors tell us we are fearful of giving money to you to help support the cause that we believe in because our businesses and our families are at risk. it's the very reason that i pointed out with that naacp

versus alabama held the constitutional right to keep people's names and identities confidential when the risk of intimidation rises to the level that it has. >> i would appreciate if you would provide for the committee some of the specifics regarding that. that is absolutely chilling. i've got a couple other quick questions that i think we can squeeze p in before the end. what year did you receive the questionnaire about your prayer gatherings? >> in 2009. >> we're told that the i.r.s. ended their interrogations in mid 2012 but that isn't your experience. is it? >> you're talking to me? >> yes. >> we turned in everything on march 5th, i believe, 2013, and we still have heard nothing since thefpblet >> i just make that point because the inspector general said that the challenges occurred between march of 2010

and ended in mid 2012. clearly that's not the case. all right. thank you. mr. buchanan. >> thank you, mr. chairman, for this important hearing. i also want to thank all of our witnesses. i applaud your leadership in terms of the effort. all of us have a different background, i was in business 30 years, came here in 2007. one of the things i tried to do is when i got here there was the sense was nobody was listening to washington so i probably as much as anybody here, i know a lot of our colleagues who on both sides, doy a lot of town halls and a lot of meetings and i started that 2007 and i can tell you one thing with a lot of conservative groups and i did go to tea party groups and many didn't want politicians there but the bottom line was they were scared to death for what was going on in this country i heard a lot of those conversations in terms of the depth, the deficit, the stimulus, the tarp, they felt -- and i felt -- we were going broke as a country. and that's why i applaud what

you're doing here today and your leadership from that point because my mind says it's very real. and the year i came in we had 130 billion dollar deficit in 2006-2007 in that period of time that deficit went up to $1.3 trillion for 4 years and i can just tell you that's what brought a lot of the energy. there's different issues but at the fore, of a lot of these conservative groups, they can do the math and when you go from $8 trillion to $16 trillion, quickly to $20 trillion, i heard about that and i as a business guy know in terms of balancing budgets, 49 out of 50 governors have to do it. more importantly they were concerned about their children and grandchildren because i represent the state of florida and a lot of people have done well there in my district and they were concerned about the next two generations. now, that being said, my question is, there's no question that you were targeted

harassed humiliated to some extent. but how did that impede your growth to your organization in terms of realizing your full potential? when you look at that. i want to start out, you had mentioned it affected one aspect from your standpoint it affected your organization in terms of a done that are could have contributed but your couldn't get your paperwork put in time. what impact did it have in terms of realizing your full potential? can you comment on that, please? >> sure. as you noted, we were promised a $30,000 grant upon achieving status. because that status has taken so long, the organization came to us and said, we'll have to move that off the books and when you get status you can reapply. this organization also added that it was unbelievable in his mind in his 25 years of being an executive director of granting money to all sorts of

nonprofits he had never seen anything like this, he had never seen any nonprofit that he dealt with not get through in two or three months. as to the impact, a lot of people know that with a nonprofit -- i'm a c 3. it's all about establishing trust. if one credible foundation puts money into the organization, i can use that then to go to other organizations and say, this organization has trusted my organization. will you now contribute? because i could not get status everything effectively stopped. and since may 2011 itch been dormant not only out of the inability to raise money but out of abject fear that the government had a target on my back. >> could you just comment? what impact did it keep you or your organization from full potential? >> i just want to make a couple comments really quick before i answer that. there seems to be some isconceptions about what a c-ization as far as -- i am

totally jut raged by the accusation that we are somehow subsidized by the taxpayers. people making donations, that is not a tax deductible amount. we are not getting any money from the taxpayers. what we're saying is, hey, if we want to have a group and people pay dues or make a donation that at the end of the year or whatever that we're not subject to then pay taxes on that money again -- which has already been taxed when the person earned it to began with. so this is a real outrage to compli that we're taking money from starving children to fund our groups. that being the case, i can't say the investigation has impeded us because the donations are not tax deductible so people have donated as they saw fit and we have just operated as if we were a c-4 since it's been pending. >> mr. east man, would you -- >> in the proposition 8 fight

in california, the opposing side raised roughly equivalent amounts of money but with the disclosure of donor list and intimidation campaign which has been brought and highlighted to ur donors, the last round of ballot initiatives last november the protraditional side was outspent by more than $20 million. i think the chilling effect that has come from the intimidation of donors to the cause is pervasive and is having real consequences on the outcomes of elections on that key policy issue that is before the american people. >> all right. mr. kind is recognized. >> mr. chairman, i too want to thank our witnesses for their testimony here today. we do appreciate it. we've got a problem on our hands and hopefully this committee will be able to move forward in a bipartisan fashion to fix it and fix it as soon as possible. because if there's any true rot at the core of our democracy it's the pervasive feeling that you're being treated unfairly, you're being singled out,

you're being discriminated in some fashion. i'm a former athlete myself and i wasn't the biggest fan of refer 82s on the field but i knew they played an important role in the game. they're an essential part. and i would hope that the answers as simple as reforming a tax code that's become antiquated and too complex, that it just becomes a processing unitnd everything else but even president reagan believed in trust but verify. if we were all angels we wouldn't have a need for government in our lives. but we do need some verification and there are some terminology that i think the i.r.s. is wrestling with and i think there's an important role for this congress and committee to help clarify to ensure this never happens again. it is clear difference between an organization that's primarily engaged in political activity or one that's engaged in social welfare and i think that's what the i.r.s. is struggling with here because the inspector general was very

clear that he found there was no partisan or political motivation behind what was going on. now, there were reports that there were progressive groups that were singled out as well. we were hoping to be able to call a witness on our side to be called as part of our panel and we could call someone from organizations, or we might have called someone who had their tax applications denied or the tax exempt status revoked. in fact, a recent tax notes article looked through the 176 i.r.s. approved organizations through may of 2013. they took a look at those. 122 of them were conservative organizations, 48 were nonconservative organizations. the six there wasn't sufficient information to determine between the two. but nevertheless, i think each of you have a legitimate cause of concern and complaint before us today. and it's going to be our obligation to do a better job

of working with the i.r.s. who i also happen to believe is overburdened with the deluge of tax exempt application over the past couple of years. and the cincinnati is a very small office trying to process all of these applications. and i think the criteria that they use was clearly wrong. and we need to look into that. why it was use it had way it was. i think there's also a question of insufficient resources and insufficient staff to deal with the deluge of application that is did come in. now, let me ask whether or not you think it would be appropriate for an organization that's primarily engaged in political activity to be able to qualify as a 501(c)(4) organization. do you think that would be appropriate? >> i think that your question is hypothetical. i can only speak for my own experience. >> well, it's not hypothetical to the i.r.s. because this is a

determination that they have to make. >> but you're asking me and i can only -- i'm trying to answer. >> let me ask you as a witness here today do you in your mind have a clear definition of what is engagement in social welfare or what is engagement in political activity? do you have a clear definition in your mind? >> i can only answer for my own experience since i'm not a lawyer. my experience is we were obeying the law and our personal group is about education about the political -- >> and i believe that you believe that in all your heart. let me ask the same question do you have a clear definition of n your mind? >> i would be glad to answer that. you know, i did a google search of other 501(c)(4) organizations and there were groups such as america votes, brady campaign, california league of conservation voters, citizens for tax justice,

democratic leadership council, environment california, gender rights maryland, georgia right to life, health care for america now, national transjender -- >> but do you have a clear definition in your mind? >> can you define political for me? >> i'm not doing this to criticize but it highlight it is point i'm making is that the definition is very subjective. and when you have a subjective definition and asking a federal agency to apply their judgment you're going to get subjective judgments from it. that's why i think we need clear bright line rules of these activities of what's allowed and what isn't allowed. and when you don't have that you're going to have instances on this of both sides of groups being singled out for additional questions and additional scrutiny and then the feeling of unfairness sets in. >> time has expired. >> at the core that's really what we're wrestling with here. rir do want to note that the

minority was given the opportunity to call a witness but did not call a witness that had been affected by i.r.s. activities so that's why there is no minority witness at the table today. i just want to make sure the gentleman understood that. mr. shock is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you to the witnesses. boy, the american people are being led to believe you guys are big muscles of political strength that are being subsidized by taxpayers and have some unfair advantage over perhaps those who share a different belief than you. so for the record, perhaps these tea party groups might -- could you tell us roughly what your annual budget is? >> sure. $2,453. our budget was

>> $2,453 for the entire year? >> yes. >> 2011, it was $3,371. >> 50% increase. >> in 2012 we did have a grant from tea party patriots that enabled us to promote our organizations so we did have approximately $9,000. >> ofpblgt >> forgive me for laughing. our annual budget is in the negative. >> are you a democratic organization? >> the first year we had a minus $1300. the second year i don't remember. those were from legal fees to actually begin the process of filing for a 501(c)(4) and other types of activities. >> so basically the harassment and illegal questions that you were asked caused your organization to deficit spend

to try and defend its constitutional right and equal protection under the law? >> yes. because it also dried up our ability to have people participate in a structure where they could donate. >> thank you. how about your budget? >> well, i don't have the exact numbers but i can tell you that we have less than $5,000 at the end of each month, roughly. one year when we took a big bus trip to washington we had $18,000 at one time in the bank but as soon as we paid off the bus that all went down. but we usually run under $5,000. >> so it's never been over $50,000? >> oh, goodness. no. >> so you can understand the outrage by members of this committee for the apparent double standard that members on this committee seem to have for their frustration, outrage, opposition to groups who seek 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(3) status

who may be on the opposite side of your issues and who we know have organized and raised far more sums than all of you collectively. one group in particular we know about is organizing for action. a group organized by the president's own men political advisers which to date we know has raised in excess of millions of dollars. and i'm just going to read on their website what they say their mission is. organizing for action is a nonprofit organization established to support president obama in achieving enactment of his national agenda. now, i would humbly ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, is that political? and why would an organization called organizing for action -- will the gentleman yield? >> no, i would not. >> what did you ask the

question for then yet? >> the gentleman has the time. >> are those names disclosed? >> are the what names? >> the names of the president's committee? are cont contributor's disclosed? those names should be disclosed. >> but we're not having a debate about whether or not we agree with citizens united, we're not having a debate about whether or not we want to change 501(c)(3) or change 501(c)(4). i would submit to you that if that is your goal perhaps introduce legislation to do so. the problem is that this i.r.s. agency has discriminated against people based on their political views. and for anyone to defend this from discriminating -- >> will the gentleman suspend? i will have v to ask our guests to refrain from applause and other displace of emotion or attention.

we need to keep decorm in the committee. i would respectfully ask that our members refrain from clapping and cheering. you may proceed. >> for anyone to suggest that these individuals' rights should be limited more so than others simply because of their political belief is nothing more than discrimination. there would be clarity if this was an issue of white versus black, or jews versus christians, but because it's conservative versus liberal there seems to be some question, some cloud, some lack of clarity. and rather than work united in a bipartisan way to root out the very cancer that my colleague mr. rangle described, we're simply trying to chop off the head of the patient, remove the acting commissioner and say all is well. we need to get to the bottom of this. we need to identify the cancer. and this needs to be removed from this organization. i yield back.

>> mr. paulson is recognized. >> thank you plup also forholding this hearing. and i just really want to thank all of you for taking the time to testify. it's really a tragedy that you have to be here today. i really want to commend you for being here today. no citizen should have to be here defending their constitutional rights. and obviously you've shared the stories of how your rights have been violated. so i just think you're brave for being here. listening to the emotion in your testimony is very real not because you're nervous about testifyinging in front of a congressional committee but probably in the back of your mind you can't help but be angry or fearful about sticking your neck out a little more and having a larger target on your back potentially. and this is not a mistake by the i.r.s. that some have mentioned today. this is not poor customer service as the acting commissioner testified just a few weeks afplgte this abuse was systemic. and it's been going on for years. and we know it's systemic

because of the number of groups that were targeted. we know it's systemic because of the number of individuals that are i.r.s. workers that have been named as a part of your testimony that we will also be able to further interview and get information from. and the larger question now is, who helped direct this activity? and low is learner is refusing to answer questions. if i could just ask a question. because you did testify that back in december of 2011 you had made numerous and repeated calls to the i.r.s. which went unreturned. and then finally you did reach an agent, ron bell. you reached that agent in cincinnati. you inquired about why the application was taking so long. and he said he had been waiting on guidance from his superiors. can you comment? who do you think his superiors would have been in sn you

mentioned it wasn't someone down the hall. >> yes. although he didn't indicate exactly where it was -- and i believe that these i.r.s. calls are record sod we could probably find out if he did indeed specify. at least that's what i remember. every time i called the i.r.s. it sadse these calls may be recorded so i think it may be indeed recorded but what i remember him saying was we've been waiting on guidance from our superiors as to your organization and similar organizations. he did not say where it was from but it was clearly implicit that it wasn't down the hall. whether from washington or some other office he had been waiting a long time. it wasn't just putting me on hold and going to talk to someone else. >> and i believe you also made some comment about conversations with i.r.s. workers who were working with some of their superiors as well? >> that is correct. ms. richards did tell me on i believe two different occasions that she would have to put me on hold and she would check with her superior or superiors

to answer the question that i was asking her. >> well, your testimony is going to help us get down to the facts so we can actually figure out who was directing this targeting. i was going to ask a question, because we did hear from the inspector general as a part of the audit in march of 2010, apparently when the targeting actually started and went forward. but we were told by the acting commissioner miller that all that targeting activity stopped in june of 2012. have you continued to receive any correspondance from the i.r.s. regarding the status of your application? >> no. >> since june of 2001? >> oh. thank you. yes. i mean, i didn't get the letter -- i heard nothing basically until september of 2012 was when we got the letter with the whole list of questions. so -- >> so after june of 2012 -- yes. >> -- you've continued to

receive information from the i.r.s. regarding the status. >> right. >> so the other issue is the whole concept of donors because we just scratched the surface but i had a conversation with a donor in my state who has been a contributor to certain political causes and has been fearful of stepping out and voicing his concern about some of these activities but now he is being more emboldened and i think we're going to hear from more folks down the road. >> i think it's critical that this committee continue its investigation into what we all agree, let's make that clear, -- on our ose only side of the room that have tried to divide us into those folks don't really want to clean up the i.r.s. like we folks do.

and that's typical propaganda game and i understand it. i want to stress your attempt at bipartisanship, plup. i think democrats and republican -- mr. chairman. i think republicans and democrats agree that flagging applications is wrong and we have a shared interest in working with you in a bipartisan way to find out what really happened and to fix it. if we're the problem, if we hadn't clarified what the tests should be for these organizations not the organization, it's we that are at fault and we need to change the test to see if that organization qualifies. but you ask everybody, you don't ask a few. so we agree on that. we don't need uninterstan shated political motivating irresponsible accusations against one another. we have to look where the fact are. no one has a god-given right to

a tax exempt status and nobody none of the panelists said that was contrary to that. the law's government tax organizations and 501(c)(4)s were created by congress. it's us. if we've been dare lict then we've got to change what the laws are. period. and for us not to change the law would mean that this could happen with the facility down the road. so all kinds of issues and all kinds of groups advocating those issues. so i think we need to focus on writing clear rules and should be a test based on how much money you spend? should it be time based? after this we can't afford not to be specific. so i've got some questions for the witnesses. mr. eastman, chairman of the

national organization for marriage, i believe. correct, sir? >> yes. >> why did your organization not choose to become -- and you don't have to answer this but i'm curious. why did you choose not to become a 527 organization under the tax law? >> because that's not what we do under our organization. when we get particularly involved in political campaigns or those that support our cause, we set up political action committees as is required by the law and pursue that route. when we are pursuing purely educational functions we use that through our nonprofit educational foundation, a 501(c)(3). and for the activity that is the tax code sets out it's compliant with 501(c)(4), we operate those activities under the 501(c)(4). >> you and i both realize that if you're a 527 declare that if you apply for that, that means your donors have to be -- >> as is a political action committee and we do disclose those donors.

the nonpolitical activity that we engage in from nom itself, we follow the same rules that everybody else follows. >> so your organization chose to become a 501 c 4 >> this particular one did. >> that organization has like all other organizations in that particular category, have a test to go through. in other words, when you make an application, you have to comply to what are some stupid questions we would both agree to that. but in the final analysis, that is information given to the i.r.s. to determine whether you're eligible for that exemption. is that correct? >> yes. >> now, one of the -- some of the questions are going to bear -- go through that thin line we talked about before. and that is what is political and what is not political? and that's a tough question. isn't it? many times. >> well, the law oftentimes is

clear. and there is no contention that hasr been made that our activities under the 501(c)(4) are not appropriate for 501(c)(4). we have our 501(c)(4) status. >> you have every right to profess what you believe in. >> that's right. and to have our clonors' confidentiality protected as the law provides. >> isn't there a question when it gets down to it when you're going to express that issue in what you believe in and doing something overtly to demonstrate where you feel you're right and whether wr there other organization, whatever it may be, is wrong? doesn't it get to be a question of is this political or not? i mean, your politics is different than my politics and what is political to you may not be political to me. it's a tough question. >> i don't think it's tough at all that when we engage in the very same activity that the

human rights activity -- that our donors are disclosed and theirs are not. it's a felony what happened to us. no such felony occurred against them and it is not being prosecuted. thank you. >> no one has inferd. -- >> time has expired. >> mr. chairman, i have a letter today that i would like to put in the record from the northeast tea party. their treasure is a gentleman that has been a cpa for 40 years and his primary practice was in helping tax exempt organizations receive their 501(c)(3) or 4. >> woufment. >> he states -- wousmed. >> he states in his testimony which i have here that he was subjected exactly to the same crutiny that you were, the

witnesses. after 15 months he received a questionnaire that had 110 questions in it. he states that unequivocally this was the most complicated questionnaire he ever received in response and very quickly ascertained that this organization was being targeted specifically because of their beliefs. they were asked questions about the vote, they were asked questions about their affiliation with training sessions, they were asked for lists of names. all of you have received very similar questions. so it is happening to all of us in all of our districts. a year ago, about this time, i wrote a letter to the acting commissioner asking if this was actually going on. he wrote a letter back and said

it was not. and then mr. joseph grant wrote a letter back and said this was not going on. just as recently as a few weeks ago we questioned the acting commissioner and still said that this was not going on. when we finally pinned him down on the questions he basically said, well, it actually was going on but you didn't ask the question the right way. and basically they had lawyered up. so since then, i'd like to walk you through a little bit of what's happened. and it's happened as a result of the fact that across the nation each one of you and each one of the groups and all of our districts have contacted their congressmen and this committee has begun a year ago to act on this. on this suspicion. and what this committee has been subjected to is really a

conspiracy of arrogance. when this committee swears in witnesses, we expect them to tell the truth. and when you write a letter to the i.r.s. commissioner and he writes you a letter back and says it's not happening, you have to operate on some premise of truth. and we have been -- this committee has been subjected to untrue statements and they've been put in writing. commissioner shulman retired and resigned. acting commissioner miller fired, then retired or resigned. joseph grant resigned. lois learner passed on she has

taken the fifth amendment is now on administrative leave and just yesterday newly named mmissioner not yet confirmed worful, his most common answer to the committee yesterday was he did not know, he was not aware, and he would have to get back to them. now, this committee has heard a lot of that especially from ms. learner in the last year. the question i would like to ask to each of you is what do you think the i.r.s. commissioner should do once this committee is successful in exposing everyone at the i.r.s. hat orkstrate this policy? >> i think it's conjecture -- i don't think it's appropriate for me to determine what the i.r.s. commissioner should do. i can only speak for what i would like to see done with

regard to the whole matter and that is to get to the truth. and if there is criminal activity, that we have the moral courage to pursue it and not just politicize it. because we as taxpayers, if we fail to pay our taxes we get criminal penalties. so it is not acceptable for the i.r.s. to say i'm sorry. >> i feel like -- i'm going to have to ask everyone to answer briefly. because we're out of time. >> i'd like to see a huge transformation of the way taxes are done. i feel like as just a person concerned in my community if i want to start an organization and work to educate citizens and have candidates in to speak and vet candidates, that sort of thing, i shouldn't need to have to worry about paying any taxes on money collected from dues. we're not funding any political candidates. and i just think -- i don't want to be involved with the i.r.s. the i.r.s. is a nightmare. and i would like something done

to reduce the average citizen's aggravation and having to deal with the i.r.s. we need to get rid of the tax system that we have and go to something much simpler like a fair tax. >> briefly. >> in addition to the felony charges on our particular issue i think you need to hold individuals responsible and with civil liability to the taxpayers whose disclosures were done so that they can pursue it even if the department of justice won't. >> the answer is the rule of law must be followed. and if it is violated it must be recommendied either civilly or criminally or both. >> thank you. >> the i.r.s. needs to uniformly process their applications without offending any of the first amendments rights. >> i will make it easy and ditto what was said but just firing a few people will not fix the problem just like was said it's a cancer inside the agency and it's got to be

rooted out from the bottom up. >> thank you. ms. black is recognized. >> thank you, plup. and i thank all of you -- mr. president. and i thank all of you for eing here today. so really appreciate you all being here today. i think prior to the exposure of what has just most recently happened in the i.r.s., if we were to ask the american people about their impression of the i.r.s. i think we would hear the words fear, powerlessness, intimidation maybe distrust. and those are words that would have been used prior to this. but i think what has now happened has confirmed that. and it certainly is a sad day for our country where our founding fathers set up the bill of rights to ensure us that we wouldn't have a government that would intimidate the very citizens of the country. and so it is really sad times that we have come to this point

where we have actually confirmed what many people would have said prior to this. if i could ask the staff to bring up one of the pieces of information that's in our file here. i bring this up because this comes as a result of a question that was asked of you. and this is question number 24 on your questionnaire. where they actually asked you the names of those students that you would be educating. can you give me any thought of why this would be of particular interest in order to establish your 501(c)(4) status? >> no. not -- it's stunning. it's unbelievable. i can't give an afpblets i've been thinking about it for 29 months as to why they would want to know the names of seventh graders that i'm teaching western civilization, political philosophy, the basic theories of economics, why in the world would the i.r.s. want to know the names of these

students but for perhaps intimidation of them and their parents to discourage them from being taught under my tuletladge. >> certainly very chilling something we wouldn't expect here in the united states. we would be looking at some communistic countries if we were to think about this kind of activity. one of my colleagues said that none of you were silenced. and what i would like to know and maybe we can start over here with you. do you feel that what was occurring here in both the intimidation and not getting the status, did it silence you? >> well, obviously i'm here. so no it didn't silence me. but. >> well your group being able to do what your group -- >> i was going to say i do have members that are fearful. they don't want to give -- they don't want to put their name on any sign-up form that we may have. i also have people e mailing me that they are getting auditted for the first time ever and they gave during the campaign.

so i can't put a number on how it has hindered our organization but it has because people have told me. >> we have not been silenced. but if we didn't have a vizzibility to the attorneys we may have been. >> so you have some folks there to help you out so that -- >> and i would agree. had we not had the aclj we couldn't have fought the government. >> thank you. >> we are not silenced but there is a fist and a hand over our mouths. because our educational opportunities to -- everything from creating bro sures or pamphlets on the constitution to buying such things as book mark that educate people about the constitution, that has been limited, to the post cards on getting information. that has been constricted because we simply don't have the funds. >> thank you.

>> you know, my nature is not to be silenced by anything. but the number one comment i get every time i do something like this is, thank you for standing up for us. you must be very brave. and i don't think it's brave. i think it's citizenship duty that we stand up er chance we get. >> i feel like if we don't speak up now that time may be lost. so i'm doing my best to speak up. but without the aclj and the knowledge of the other groups being targeted i'm really not sure what would have happened. there was a time when i was just ready to say forget this whole thing. it is very chilling and i think that -- >> time is running out. >> the point that i want to make here is that your first amendment rights are being violated here. you want to just? >> whether or not it's chilling i think was even evident today because some of the democrats on this committee actually

implied that what is social welfare to them is social welfare but what might be social welfare to us is somehow negotiable. >> i yield back. >> thank you. mr. young is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. since the issue of groups being targeted by the i.r.s. has come to light, i've continually encouraged everyone i speak to to let the facts lead us to wherever they may. we don't want to draw prema tour conclusions. follow the facts. the more fact wes learn including in this hearing the more concerned i get that there's some organized effort to stifle conservative political activity. given the pattern of intimidation and obstruction we've seen from the i.r.s., i at least understand why some are ready to jump to firm conclusion. but perhaps what's most frustrating to me is we still need so many answers.

answers that we're not getting from some of the higher ups and from others, that represent us in our federal government. while we wait for those answers, far too many members ca raiding as journalists suddenly downplay the gravity of this situation. we hear that again. and then they draw the conclusions of their own. that don't seem to jive with the -- jibe with the fact that is we already know. we've herd for instance is groups applying for tax except status that engage in political activity. the problem is the group. but groups of every political persuasion do this. they apply for this tax exempt status. so why is it that every tea party group that applied for 501(c)(4) status was targeted? why is the approval subsequently take years longer than many of their progressive counter parts? i want to know. the people want to know. why were pro life groups and

groups in support of traditional targeted but not pro abortion and marriage equality groups? it has been more than suggested that just during this hearing that this is really about citizens united. and about 501(c)(4) groups and their undisclosed list. why were groups filing for 501(c)(3) like some of those here today when their as inappropriate questions like the content of their prayers, why were 501(c)(3) applicants left in limbo if this is about the abuse of 501(c)(4) stay in this? we have heard this is about organizations gaining the system but if that is so, what was the

irs so concerned about individual donors, to these organizations? why in the months prior to a major federal action did donor information for conservative groups get illegally released by the irs? we want to know the answer to that question. why did donors to conservative candidates get targeted with threatening communications? all this is extremely troubling and we need more answers. sadly, those who could tell us the most would rather plead the fifth amendment than help us get to the bottom of these things. this must never, ever happen again. we need to ensure that safeguards are in place as others on both sides of the aisle have said so that our executive branch cannot nurture or give license to a culture or a subculture of intimidation within our federal agencies. finally, we need to punish those who violated our trust. i am looking forward to that day when we do prosecute those who

are responsible for acts that may well need to be prosecuted as more facts come in. you indicate you already have those facts on hand. let's of those facts are presented before a court of law and that proper action is taken. we have an indiana tea party group that waited for a number of years for their application to be approved. they decided not to answer the irs' inappropriate questions. they finally received a denial of their status but just a few days later, after being denied, they were approved. that is curious behavior and i want to know if any of your groups had a similar situation where you were approved days after being denied? >> we actually were approved so

they did not deny us but we acted very quickly once we have legal help, pointing out their request being illegal. >> it was 600 something days but were finally approved. we were never denied. >> i yield back. >> mr. kelly is recognized. >> i thank you all for being here. i was an automobile dealer and my dad started our business in 1953 after the war. you can imagine my shock in 2009 when all of a sudden, one of my franchises was being taken away not because they did not know

how to run for did not meet the metrics but because the government made a decision that you will no longer be in business. i went through a process and got the dealership back but there is something wrong here. there's something wrong. this is truly a david vs. goliath. i think edmund burke said all that is necessary for the triumph government is for good men to do nothing. i hope that you have encouraged other people throughout the country to come forward. you do not have to be afraid of this government. the fear only exists if you allow it to continue. to not let that happen to you. i traveled to the district last week and i can't tell you the number of people that came to me and said i would like to say something but you use my name, i'm afraid it will come after me. my god, is that what we have come to? i call the decoration day but i know it is called memorial day.

a guy came up to me afterwards and asked to talk to me. he said we were denied our status. i ask what happened. he said was some kind of certification. he was wondering if it is because the penn township group is maybe we are made up reports of republicans and are targeted? the american people were frozen with fear. we have gone far beyond being chilling. we have exceeded and gone way over what this government is supposed to be able to do. when i talk to you all and see you here and understand what it is you are going through, you don't have big budgets to work with.

the stall tactic can keep you on the sidelines for ever. what kind of legal fees have built up? >> i have my own legal fees because i am an attorney so i have done everything quid pro quo. the aclj represents us as a non- profit but that does not mean i don't have countless other expenses. i have been funding by laws to organization that i assumed one day would be granted tax-exempt status, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 of my own money to wait for this day that i have you build up some costs? >> aclj is representing us for free. >> hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees we have incurred trying to protect our donors and fight the nonsense. >> legal costs and meeting costs and other things to run our

group such as speakers' fees to get the good trainers out and good organization people and spokespeople out, yes. >> the thomas more society is taken responsibility of our financial expenses. >> aclj is representing us we do not have our own costs. >> isn't it incredible what you're going through to maintain your first amendment rights? this is not a problem that is in cincinnati. this is a problem deep in the bowels of this government. if we cannot stop this culture of fear, this government-sponsored fear, we are coming up short on what the oath we took is that we did not take it from the republican party. i am sick of hearing it is about republicans or democrats. this is about americans 3 we took off -- an oath of office not to defend the rights of republicans or democrats, we took an oath to defend our constitution. i applaud you for what you are doing today.

do not give up on this because i think if you can stall them long enough and drive the costs high enough, the cost me $60,000 to get my dealership back and i was told the system allows you to get it back. i was able to get back what the government stole from me -- isn't that a novel idea? thank you for what you're doing and stay the force and do not give up and spread the word to the rest of the american public do not be afraid of this government. it is only when the fear the government that we lose. this is a government that is supposed to serve the people. keep up the fight, we are with you, and we got your back. >> mr. griffin is recognized. >> thank you for being here today. it reminds me of the famous quote that a government big enough to give you everything you need is powerful enough to take everything you have. that sort of goes to your quote earlier when you're talking

about the government culture that we are dealing with here. what we have seen described here and in a previous hearing is a distant, ever-growing, almost unlimited federal government that, in many instances, means well but it is unresponsive to people that live thousands of miles away. the bigger it grows, the less accountable it is. i think this is another example of that. i want to clarify couple of things. there has been a lot of facts thrown around and they're a lot of myths as well. there is no surge in 501(c)(4) applications in 2010.

i know some people get talking points and read them and they don't know what they mean. "the washington post" and the others have reported but there was no surge in 501(c)(4) in 2010. it just did not happen. and we are not just talking about 501(c)(4). we are talking about 501(c)(3). i am holding a lawsuit that relates to z street, they are trying to get organized and they are a pro-israel group. i've got the questionnaire that they were sent. the irs -- they were just trying to get 501(c)(3) status, not 501(c)(4). the question was --"does your organization support the existence of the land of israel?" "describe your organization's feeling toward the land of israel." it is unbelievable.

it is interesting that in " the new york times," a senior state department official was talking about some of the charitable groups active in the middle east. he said that the funding for these groups is a problem because it is not helpful to the efforts we are trying to make. is there a connection? i don't know, but it is outrageous that they would ask these sorts of things of groups. you heard some other members quote the inspector general. i would point out that it was an audit. there were no e-mails requested, no depositions. it just scratched the surface. a lot of people did not cite the fact that it was conservative groups that were targeted. that is why you are here.

it is not a debate over the law. it is the fact that some groups were given a path and some groups or not. that is what this was all about despite the fact that some people said it is about terminology for we have not given them the right terms. do you really need training to know that you don't ask americans what they are praying about? i mean, seriously. do you really need training to know that you don't approach a group and tried to get a deal that they won't protest planned parenthood? it is unbelievable. if you have to write to that type of stuff in the statute, we're just out of luck, folks. that is just common sense. i think this is another great argument for tax reform. if you want to reduce the abuse and power of the irs, we need to reduce the complexity of the tax code that they enforce every day.

i would just say in closing that i would encourage you to explore all of your options against this government. encourage you to look at 42 us 83 which allows you to sue when your rights have been violated. it is about first amendment rights and i would encourage you you have your own lawyer is -- when citizens are treated the way you have been, i think you should use every tool that you can to hold this government accountable. we will do our job here but this is a federal government that agency after agency after agency is out of control. i appreciate you all being brave and being here today, thank you. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to get back to make sure i thank everyone of you for being here. i have practiced in the business

world for almost 30 years before i came here. i have only been over two years and i have been a cpa. i had to sit in front of those irs agents with clients or i had to get the letter from that individual that you will receive from the irs. it is appalling, not only what i heard from your testimony and irs did, but they do not treat i sat in many, many situations of the irs and they never seemed to care. it is amazing how long the made you wait and that is appalling that this government allows this to happen. one thing that is interesting for me is when i took over a bad business, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to blame the guy who appointed the manager of the company before i took it over. quite frankly, we had to fix the problem and move forward for it when i hear people say that this was a bush appointee, i always

say isn't it amazing? we should be talking about how we fix the problems whoever is there. as leaders, we should be taking responsibility to make sure those problems are fixed. we had testimony two weeks ago from acting commissioner miller. he seemed more interested in providing excuses. i heard him say i don't know -- if he would have answered your questions, i don't know what would happen to you. maybe there would have to run your application away but yet we have the acting commissioner in here two weeks ago talking about i don't know. he gave half-hearted apologies but i found it appalling and most disturbing what -- with many of his responses.

as victims, do you believe these actions by the irs to you were illegal? i would like to hear your thoughts. >> it is absolutely illegal. when the government uses the irs for political purposes, this is part of the articles of impeachment in the nixon administration before he resigned. it is serious and clearly illegal to single us out for disparate treatment based on our political views. >> i agree with what he said. >> chapter and verse, it makes it a felony to disclose confidential tax returns. >> i agree with everyone here. illegal, immoral, and it was very un-american. >> i think it is very illegal. >> i agree. >> if you go back on my record,

i was a fighter and believe in fighting for my clients so i appreciate you being here and fighting. don't ever quit and if you need anybody to stand beside you, give me a call. i yield back. >> last but not least, mr. reid. >> thank you, mr. chairman and a panelist. i just wanted to express my sincere thoughts that we stand with you. i have heard a bunch of my colleagues talk about how with certain individuals having been fired as a result of this. mr. miller sat right where you were and when i estimate question, he had not been fired. he had been allowed to retire with full benefits. he was drawing a paycheck paid for by the american taxpayer and he tried to answer my question and that frustrates me but he would not answer.

then you have lois lerner has taken the fifth and is now allowed to go on vacation. that is accountability in washington, d.c. that is unacceptable to me. what i want to leave today with ms. garrison, in your statement a lot of people in washington for get to their work for. the work for you. it is not the other way around. that is the culture of abuse of power that i see in the irs. i want to hear from you how that makes you feel, that there has not been any accountability as of yet. what would you ask us, me specifically, as a member of this panel, to do to make you feel that justice has been served? >> i think it will take a lot for the american people to ever trust the irs because of the

nature. the irs has always been a scary agency. like so many of you have already committed to do a full investigation, followed through on every lead, do not stop until you get to the bottom. we need to rid this cancer. do what it is a need to do and we will be here to hold you accountable to do that. >> i appreciate that because if we do not do that, one of the things i'm concerned about with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle is we do not get to the bottom of this, i have listened to the testimony of each and everyone of you -- we have already heard the chilling affect what the iris has done. you talk about the factor pamphlets were not produced. you talked about donors shying away from giving donations to your organization. that is a chilling effect and if we don't hold this community, this city accountable, where do you think it will go? do you think it will get worse

or better? would you advise as to sit silently by and do what so many elected officials have done before? they might say there's a problem and need to change law. we need to enforce law that is on the books. you point out that this is a felony. a felony. that is equivalent to who? murderers are felons. robbers are felons. the law has been declared that we will hold this type of behavior accountable to the level of the seriousness of a felony. yet, what we have heard so far is it was inadvertent, it was a mistake. does that make you feel better? that is the standard we will potentially live with for accountability in washington? >> when it is so divided and a part to beat from the truth, it does not make me feel better at all. >> i want to end with your words

on this -- you are the individuals who have stood up and come here. you said you will not be silent and i applaud that. how many of your colleagues do you think similar to the ones that came up to me during the week when i was back home in the district that said i want to say what happened to me but don't use my name. how many do you think are out there? any of you offer any guess? >> just last week, i had one of our attendees say please take my name off the mail. i am afraid. there is a lot of language here about people going in and out of the shadows. the citizenship ticket in this particular place with this issue should be the rule law, nothing more, nothing less. please go were the facts lead you.

>> can anyone hazard a guess? tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands? do you think many americans with the busy lives they have will say that's what i want to do with my free time? >> the prospect of challenging the irs and having your last ten years of tax returns gone through with a fine tooth comb is chilling for many americans. for the first time, i bought audit defense when i filed my returns this year. this is scary and they say don't fight city hall but some point, you have to stand and fight or city hall is no longer what it is supposed to be. >> time has expired but another member is recognized. >> i'm sorry i had to step out for quite a bit. i missed a few of the statements. let me start by saying to the witnesses, each and everyone of you, you are all victims here.

you and so many other groups, conservative and progress of alike, targeted by the irs are the victims. to say otherwise is wrong and it is not representative of the democratic party as well as the chairman noted, the outrage at what is occurring at the iris is shared by republicans and democrats alike. while i welcome the witnesses, i would like to highlight that the minority party are typically allowed to invite one witness to the cheering. we did not invite any witness to this hearing. that is not because progress of return not targeted, they were. in fact, the cig report looking into this targeting documented that fact. i would like to submit for the record that list of dozens of progressive groups that have been inappropriately targeted alongside tea party groups by

the irs. >> that objection and i would say the minority did not identify any witnesses that had been targeted by the irs but we're certainly given that opportunity. that is correct. you may continue. >> instead of making this about ideological groups, we democrats want to make this hearing about the facts. and how we prevent this targeting from happening again. whether it be the targeting of progressive or conservative groups and everyone else in between, the members of the groups testifying today might never vote for me, if i was on their ballot. i want each and everyone of you to know that, as the congress, we collectively represent you. as many can recall, i asked lois lerner about whether the irs was politically targeting groups two days before she and the irs came

clean to the world and admitted the agency was in fact screening on ideological grounds. many have asked me why ask her about this matter before the public outrage to place. the reason is, no american should be targeted by the government for their personal views and want to get to the bottom of the rumors that had been circulating for some time and the irs was once again targeting certain individuals. unfortunately, this is not their first time mixing up its mission with its personal politics. starting in 2002 and 2004, under president bush, the irs went after progress of christian churches, the naacp, and environmental groups. its actions are as wrong today as they were in 2004. i don't recall the same bipartisan outrage existing then as i believe it does today, it should have. no agency has the right to

target or discriminate based on political ideology. i want to correct the record on a few matters. some of our republican colleagues have been working overtime to try and paint this as a political conspiracy by the white house. there is no evidence tying this to the white house. in fact, the ig report makes that clear. at the most recent hearing, the treasury inspector general was appointed by president bush testified that no official at the treasury department or the white house were involved or knew of anything about the target to anchor it the same inspector general under questioning said that he would have questioned the -- and investigate senior treasury department and any obama administration official if he thought they were involved. he testified under oath that there were not involved. i would like to submit the discussion between ms. jenkins and the treasury inspector into the record. it was the same inspector general that notify republicans including republicansdarrell issa in the summer of 2012, must

be for the 2012 national elections. i would like to submit the treasury inspector general's letter to him and the rsc chair confirming this investigation into the irs dated july 11, 2012. >> without objection. >> if there was political targeting during an election year that members of congress like chairman issa have sat quietly and not brought this to the public attention? i think the chairman speaks for itself. he did nothing and said nothing because there was no whistle to blow. this is the second chapter in less than a decade that the irs has been caught going robe. the when wrote in 2002, 2004 when they inappropriately targeted churches and the naacp.

mr. chairman, i think the record speaks for itself -- there is no smoking gun. what happens to these americans is intolerable and ought not to have happen whether they be aggressive or conservative. the actions of the irs, be they from the democratic republican side, should not be tolerated. >> time has expired. i want to thank the witnesses for coming forward today. it is not an easy thing to do to sit through a congressional hearing and answer questions from a whole variety of perspectives and members. i want to tell you how impressed i am with the answers you gave and the quality of your testimony. i'm also impressed with your moral conviction, the perseverance and courage you have shown by being year-to-date in representing so many other

americans equally affected. you have helped the committee agreed deal. more importantly, you helped the american people and great deal and that help the nation a great deal and i thank you very much for that. that, this hearing is adjourned. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> i thought the hearing was a very powerful hearing. it is very clear that this is not just a list of a few people but there is a systematic -- should i start over? i want to say i thought was a very powerful hearing and i think it is very clear that this is not just a -- that this is a systematic approach to this whole issue. this really gave a voice to

hundreds of americans and what they have gone through. i meant it when i said i was impressed by the quality of the testimony. it is a difficult format for the uninitiated and to hear their stories firsthand and what it meant to them and to the country was very powerful. [indiscernible] >> certainly, the investigation will continue. we are just at the beginning and will need to be interviewing more witnesses, probably in an interview format. that will be the next phase as that we move into. it was important to hear a person from people affected and not just have a transcript of what may have occurred to them that you hear what they have to say so there was a strong and very important testimony we will hopefully be interviewed a number of people worked at the irs during this time.

>> what about what to have gotten from the interviews you gotten so far? >> we are just the beginning so it is not appropriate to draw conclusions yet. we have more of those to do and after that i can draw some conclusions. >> people and the cincinnati office? >> we have just begun some interviews in the cincinnati office. we have spoken to a couple of people there. there's obviously more to need to do. >> do you think [indiscernible] >> i think this is much broader than that. when we get the fact that donor information was disclosed and this involves 501(c)(3), it is really a broader look at that. at the end, there may be legislative changes that we need to make but i think, at this point, we are trying to get

around the scope of the issue. this is larger than we first thought and it is not just a couple of people in one office. this is a nationwide, systematic approach to target people who have certain political beliefs. this is what we are trying to understand how far this goes. we still don't know who initiated this and we don't know how far it goes up the chain and we are trying to find those things out. >> what about the broken tax code? >> it shows that a simpler tax code would give less discretion to the irs. one of the witnesses even said that as well. if there could be more of a review of documents as opposed to these kind of complex judgment calls, i think that would be helpful. >> [inaudible]

>> i certainly have that authority and i'll use it at the appropriate time. thank you everyone. >> even more hearings on the iris targeting of conservative groups online at c-span.org and in our c-span video library at c-span video.org. this morning, no work new jersey mayor cory booker announces candidacy for u.s. senate in the election to fill the vacant seat of the late senator frank lautenberg. . there will be a democratic primary as another canada announced he would run as well.

-- another candidate announced he would run as well. >> when you put on a uniform for a job that is a maintenance shop, and this is true for a building janitor or if you are a sanitation worker, you are assumed by the role to the point where it is almost like you are just a part of the background, almost like a machine, so that you are a human being wearing that uniform. the general world gets to overlook you, and really sort of not see you. it is like a cloaking device. who are fellow star trek geeks will get that reference. or harry potter's cloak of invisibility. it is frustrating and also an interesting privilege. when i'm wearing be sanitation worker uniform, i can observe people in ways that they do not realize i am observing them. >> nyu professor and department of sanitation anthropologists and residents robin nagle sunday

at 8:00 on's q&a. ofnext, some of the markup the 2014 defense authorization bill by the house armed services committee. in this portion, they focus on guantanamo bay, transfer policy, and related issues. this is three hours. >> we're down into the home stretch. pursuant to committee 17 the concert dates when the ranking member, we will postpone all remarks until the end of the chairman's remark. i will turn to my good friend and colleague, mr. smith, fernie, and the ranking member wishes to make. >> i have not. >> let's get started. before amendments, if 30 discussion? mr. thornberry was recognized

for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i do think it is worth taking two minutes to connect issues that have received a tremendous amount of attention, including the speech the president gave a week before last. one provision requires the president to give us an assessment of al qaeda and its affiliates, the threat they propose united states, the threat they have to the core al qaeda, etc.. it is important not to have fried ones -- fragments, but an administration positions on these affiliates or people who claim to be affiliates of al qaeda around the world. the second provision i to highlight is one that has been cosponsored by mr. smith and others that such of a mechanism in law that requires an us ofstration to notify sensitive military operations,

including lethal operations and capture operations. the issue here, as i mentioned a few minutes ago, -- a few hours ago -- is how do we fulfill our constitutional responsibilities to conduct the oversight of military operations? sets up arovision friend work for -- were the administration embedded tell us before, after, and quarterly about these sensitive operations. the press will phrase it as drone operations. it is not restricted to a particular mechanism, but for things that the military carries out, the set up a framework to make sure that there is the appropriate oversight by this committee. ani think that this is important step forward. i appreciate this committee blow the support and the and administration look like they will support us as they say they will be more transparent.

i think all members need to focus on these issues because it part of our responsibility. >> thank you vermont. the gentleman yields back. thank you. >> with respect to mr. thornberry's position on oversight, i was one who signed on to hr 1904 so that congress has been an oversight on the sensitive military operations. notably missing in that is an exception to afghanistan, and that is because we are still at war in afghanistan. however, there is no sunset provision triggered that will give us oversight after those operations. we've had extensive .onversations i did want to point that out because i do think that this congress should have oversight over afghanistan. once those operations are

complete. i yield. >> i think the gentleman makes a very good point. inn and if combat operations afghanistan, it will be more like other parts of the world, and this exception that is in there is something that we definitely want to consider removing at that point. i think it is important for us to look at those exceptions each year and see what the status of things are. i certainly agree with the point the general is making. that is certainly my intention. there is an exception for afghanistan or anywhere in the future that we have a declaration of war. or once that war is done potentially phased down, i think i yield back. that exempt not to go away. i yield back. -- i think that extension ought to go away. i yield back. >> thank you. any other discussion before we entertain amendments? hearing none, i ask unanimous consent to call on package

number one consisting of amendments that have been worked and approved by the minority side. without objection, so ordered. with the clerk please pass up the amendments? >> these are fueled and ready to go. and blog package number one is comprised of the following -- 002r1 to number expand conditions under which covered contractors can qualify for exemptions. from strict reliability and corrective action of counterfeit or suspected counterfeit electronic parts including identified obsolete parts in a circle and -- in certain circumstances. does not apply to procurement of commercial items. mr.dment number 012 by

larson relating to procurement, technical assistant cooperative agreement programs. 37r1 by ms.mber davidson miserably, to promote the recruitment of women. 056r1 by mr.ber sanchez, mr. larson, and mr. garamendi to increase global threat by reduction initiative by $23 million and reduce international material protection and cooperation by $23 million. 119r1 by ms.ber spirit to require the department waiver decision is available on a public website. 140 by mr. bver to require a report on capabilities and policy

associated with the counter drug mission on the national guard on a southwest quarter of the united states. 168 by mr.umber jones to require the determination of the disclosure of transportation costs procured by secretary of defense for congressional trips outside the u.s. 178 by mr.umber conway to express that the national guard counter narcotic program should receive continued funding. 185r1 to number direct the secretary of defense to report to congressional defense committees on progress made for abducting a -- adopting a strategy that minimizes the cost of insurance to the dod and its contractors as required by section number 2009 inthe fiscal year dnda.

amendment by mr. andrews to require the cost given equal importance to technical and other criteria for defense contracts. amendment number 197 by mr. hunter to require a technical avaluation of the dcgs- program by the director of operational tests and evaluation. amendment number 221 by mr. garamendi and mr. gibson that affirms that nothing in the bill constitutes an authorization for the use of force in syria. any discussion on the amendments? the gentlelady is recognized for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. disturbed director for congresswoman gabrielle giffords, the national guard was placed on the border. all of the reports are that they were most effective in

helping the border patrol intercept drug smugglers. i'm glad to see that the markup is going to address this issue. in my district, we represent 13% of the border, the southwest border. we also represent 38% of all drug cases and -- of all the drugs captured in this country. we need help, and the national guard in the past has provided it. i look forward to seeing them engaged to help with this. i want to thank the committee for accepting my report land was on this matter, i want to thank my colleague again for its support. i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. -- gentlelady is recognized the gentleman is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. the package estimate on counterfeit electronic parts. to thwart as much as possible counterfeit

electronic parts from getting into the acquisitions process, and two, we need to save taxpayer money. in 2011, the senate armed services committee investigators uncovered that approximately 1000 800 cases of suspect counterfeit electronic parts with a total number of parts involved exceeding one million got into the supply system. where did they come from? they came from china. investigators traced more than 70% of suspect counterfeit electronic parts back to china. the committee report concluded that china is the dominant source for counterfeit electronic parts infiltrating the supply train -- supply chain. that the chinese government knows about that that does nothing to stop it. we know how quickly consumer electronics become obsolete. it is a matter of months, not years, yet we build weapon systems that last for decades. this means that many of their electronic parts become obsolete. the situation sometimes forces contractors to rely on riskier

suppliers beyond original manufacturers, authorized dealers, and trusted suppliers. my amendment would incentivize the dod and suppliers to reduce risk and craft effective remedies in cases of obsolete parts. mr. chairman, i would like to thank you for allowing this amendment, and i yield back. >> the gentleman yields back. ms. davis recognized for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i bring this to your attention largely because we had a bipartisan delegation of women from this committee go repeatedly to afghanistan. i wanted to let you know how important this has been. we know that the future security of women in afghanistan is inherently tied to presence of women and all levels of garden -- of government. and it is tied to the future of the government -- of the country and our national security. on trips, we have seen women

slowly but increasingly take on roles within the security forces. we had an opportunity to visit with a number of cadets this year at the university, which is supported by all of us, by the united states but we did find is that even basic facilities there had not really been developed for the women. we saw insistence on the part of the afghan government. so this is an attempt to fence notsome dollars that have really been utilized for the security forces therefore the afghan women. we know how hard our own men and women have fought on behalf of their taking this role now in afghanistan. so i want to thank the committee for helping us with that and $47.3 million toward the afghan women security forces is less than one thing percent the total amount of afghan security forces find.

there are a number of other women, ms. robey and others who participated and argued to the afghan ministers that we met with that this is a very important issue for us and for them, and that we hope that they would take it seriously. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. any other discussion? if not, the question is on the adoption amendment offered. in favor, say aye, those opposed no. ayes have it, and the amendment is agreed to. next, we move to amendment 015. will the clerk please distribute the amendments?

without objection, reading of the amendment will be dispensed with. the chair now recognizes the gentleman for the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment. thank you, mr. chairman. >> -- >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm offering this on behalf of myself and mike thompson of california. it is pretty straightforward. there are already requirements for having dod from perth -- from purchasing certain items not produced in the united states, so you might think that this would not be necessary when it comes to flag by the dod. you would be wrong. you might think somebody over at dod would have a thought that american flag got to be made in america. well, you would be wrong. this ise when i think pretty straightforward, it is

unacceptable for our tax dollars to pay for u.s. flags made overseas. of myry hopeful that all colleagues on both sides of the aisle will see that this is a commonsense approach. i ask for support of the minutes, and i yield back. >> is there any discussion on the amendments? the question is on adoption of the amendment offered by him, number 015. as many cars are in favor will say aye, those opposed no. ayes have it. vm and is agreed to. mr.l have the amended by

smith, mr. -- number 244. will the clerk please distribute the amended? without objection, the rating of the amendment will be dispensed with. [inaudible] the chair now recognizes the

gentleman for the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment. >> thank you, mr. chairman. this amendment would allow for the transfer of guantanamo bay inmates to the united states. with the recent cost we have seen at guantanamo and the controversies we have seen with hunger strike, one of the criticisms have been that the president has not offered a plan for how to close it. unfortunately, congressional language has consistently barred him from doing that. if we're going to ask the president to come up with a plan, we have got to at least give him some flex ability to do that, as long as it he is restricted from transferring a lot of what i'm up to the u.s., there's really no way to to get there. it is worth for memory that president george w. bush, then candidate john mccain, secretary of defense gates, all wanted to close guantanamo, and they had good reason for it. it was an international eyesore. an example of the united states

not living up to its values. make no mistake about it, it work us when we try to toh the allies to work .onfront al qaeda they continues to make sense now. one of the other big reasons is it is the most expensive present in the world. given its remote location, it is not easy to maintain. it's not easy to do the basic construction necessary to continue it. again, we are now now asking $250 million in this bill just to continue to make it temporary. there is really no way to make it permanent. the objection is we cannot possibly bring these folks to united states. again, i was a a that in the united states of america, we have successfully locked up some of the most dangerous, despicable people in the world. if the u.s. is incapable of

having a present that will then we're inold in a whole world of hurt. we iteris exactly like the people in guantanamo held here in the u.s. in the present. there is no question that we are capable of doing it. there have been some concern about cost. when we brought someone to the trial, that the security cost would be outlandish. we have tried the person in new york city. other folk, and those costs were not primitive, number one. number two, mohammed and the other four whose names escape me are in a military commission. they're not going to be taken out of that military commission. that where they're going to be tried.

that security threat will not be an issue. i understand that the political argument has been made. that argument does not bear scrutiny when you consider the we have to hold in this country, no matter what in our supermassive facility. , theost of guantanamo fact that it continues to be an international eyesore, argue for to be close. it cannot be closed if we do not have the option. we still have a tough question. what we do with them in terms of which ones we returned to their home country, which was we try, which once use our military commissions, those are difficult questions, but those questions exist now in guantánamo. would make a bold statement that our values are going to be upheld and we will close the presence. just give the president the option of coming up with that

plan that i know several on this committee have asked him to come up with. i yield back. >> you yield back. [laughter] >> mr. thornberry, the gentleman from texas is recognized for two minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. have thedent does option because this ban is not a permanent law. we have to vote it every year. so if the president comes up with the plan that can gain the support of the american people and the representatives in congress, then that man can go away. but so far, the american people have made their views clear, as have their representatives in congress. yesterday, we had a vote on prohibiting funds from being used to bring people here, to house people who are brought 254 ofom guantanamo, and

us in the house voted not to bring them. even the in the president of the speech last week said that these are difficult questions, what do you do with them that is the point. you've got to figure that out before you just bring them here and then figure out what to do with them or let them go back to yemen and then hope that they are going to be safeguarded. you've got to have a plan first. if a president can do that and then convince the american people and us that that is a good plan, this ban go the way. again, it has to be renewed every year, but until he does that, it is hard to see that there is a better option than guantánamo as long as its war against terrorists continues. i oppose the amendment, and i recommend that the members do as well. the gentleman yields back. the gentleman from virginia is recognized for two minutes. >> tonight is a sea change because on may 20 8, 2010, we

had a motion to recommit on the floor where we said that our government is better off when the united states is safe and we fight to keep the terrorists off u.s. soil rather than fight to bring them here. and we've pointed out then that at the time that the president stop these prosecutions, we had one of the best prosecutors the u.s. had against terrorists. they had a fuel -- full prosecution team. they made countless hearings, almost two years of litigation, and the president walked in and stopped all that and destroyed it all and that we have to start all over again. on that day, we made this motion, and we said we're not going to bring these people back to you the united states. and then the the chairman of this committee, ike skelton, and stood up on the and said this -- we have dealt with these issues strongly in the committee. this adds to those particular issues. we are in a position to accept this motion. he said -- i just wish to point out there is no difference between the democrats and republicans when it comes to fighting terrorism. mr. chairman, we are changing

course tonight, and there is a huge difference. no one has ever argued in this committee. we cannot hold these terrorists and prison. .ever been argued on this site what we said is we place a target on the back of every school, every business, every community that we put these prisoners in when we bring them here because that is where the terrorists are going to go. we are not worried about whether we can keep them in jail. the second thing is the moment their feet touch u.s. soil, they will pick up new constitutional rights and nobody in here can't tell us exactly what those rights are. because of that, mr. chairman, i would say ike skelton was right, we were right on may 28, 2010, and we are right today. make sure we save the american people. we're not going to bring terrorists to the united states, we're going to get them them in guantánamo bay. with that, i yield back. >> i seek to speak in opposition.

largest facility in iraq for one year. i am kind of taken what we call guantanamo an eyesore because i have been there and i think the prisoners are treatedguantanamo. we spent millions of dollars completing a court room down there. we have not completed any trials. as far as hunger strikes, we're dealing with that in a humane fashion as well. it is a safe place. i do not think there are many people in cuba that are trying to free the people that are held at guantanamo, where as when we were in iraq, that may be the case. additionally, it was mentioned that we lock up some of our most hardened criminals. trying to free those people either to release them back to our society. but that threat would exist here as we have seen with the violence that has taken place from our data within our country still, or those affiliated with it.